Albert Joseph Moore - study for A Summer Night

new display at the Walker Art Gallery will help those of us mourning the passing of the summer (what we had of it), cope with the transition.

'A study for A Summer Night', acquired for the gallery with assistance from the Art Fund charity, has gone on display alongside an accompanying preparatory watercolour and the final oil painting, both from the gallery’s permanent collection.

Seen together for the first time the trio reveal Moore made several changes to the composition, but that the vivid colours remained constant: primrose yellow and nocturnal blue. The lazy summer evening scene is a typical example of the Aesthetic movement, in which artists would strive to combine colour and mood.

The drawing was the earliest in the series (1884-6), followed by the watercolour (1890) with the final oil finished and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890. Moore laid down the ideas in the initial sketch and used the watercolour to mark up a grid so that he could size up the study to oil painting dimensions. His dedication was such that he worked solidly on the painting for around three years.


It was his last major work before his death in 1893.

Albert Joseph Moore - Shuttlecock

Albert Joseph Moore - Reading Aloud, 1884

Albert Joseph Moore - Jasmine

Albert Joseph Moore - Female Figure Study

Albert Joseph Moore - Cartoon for 'An Idyll'

Price Realized £50,450

pencil and black chalk, on paper
31¾ x 28½ in. (80.7 x 72.4 cm.)

This is the full-scale cartoon for Moore's painting An Idyll in the Manchester City Art Gallery. Shown at the Royal Academy in 1895, the picture was his last exhibited canvas. It betrays the interest in narrative and symbolism that marks such a radical departure in his very late works and is generally related to the illness he suffered during the last years of his life. The chief expression of this tendency is The Loves of the Winds and the Seasons (Blackburn Art Gallery), completed only about a week before his death on 25 September 1893.

A pastel study for An Idyll, now missing, was in Moore's memorial exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, London, in 1894, and a study for the girl's head (black chalk on tracing paper, 15 x 11 5/8 in.) was lent by a private collector to the exhibition Albert Moore and his Contemporaries held at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1972, no. 75.

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=7&intObjectID=5451290&sid=94259890-b0ce-4b69-b0f5-38c9dc37555e

Albert Joseph Moore - Charity

CARITAS (CHARITY)
signed with an anthemion l.r.
coloured pastels on grey paper
130 by 56cm., 51 by 22in.

Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 85,250 GBP

The present drawing was apparently based upon a design for a memorial window and depicts a mother in classical robes accompanied by children. It has been dated to c.1890 and is a beautiful example of Moore's later work. The pastel is similar to a group of drawings owned by the famous department store founder Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty (sold in these rooms, 6 October 1980, lots 61-64). Pastel was a medium that Moore used increasingly in later years with great expression as Robyn Asleson has explained; 'Lending itself to subtle nuance, pastel moderated Moore's
rigorously analytical approach to composition. The female body, which he had long endeavoured to render dispassionately, attained greater sensuality in his last works.' (Robyn Asleson, Albert Moore, 2000, p.193) These drawings were not mere studies and have an intensity of their own and depict delicate subjects of human emotion;

'Intimations of love and affection merely hinted at in earlier compositions became overt themes in Moore's later pastels and related works. The bond between mother and child provided the subject of Caritas, a nearly life-size pastel...' (op. cit) It is possible that Caritas owes elements of its composition and subject to a painting of the same title by Edward Burne-Jones completed in 1885 (collection of Lord Lloyd Webber), particularly the naked child held in the mother's arms and the older child half-hidden behind her robes.