Lot 76: ALBERT JOSEPH MOORE

ALBERT JOSEPH MOORE BRITISH 1841 - 1893 THE MARBLE SEAT 18 1/2 by 29 3/8 in. 47 by 74.6 cm 50 by 76cm., 20 by 30in.

London, Royal Academy, 1865, no. 586
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1886, no. 1171
London, Grafton Gallery, 1894, no. 184

Alfred Baldry, Albert Moore, His Life and Works, London, 1894, pp. 30-31, 102, illus. p.29
Robyn Asleson, Albert Moore, London, 2000, pp. 38, 77, 79-81, 85, 89, 92, 189, 196, illustrated p. 78

Philip Henry Rathbone (1828-1895), of Green Bank Cottage, Green Bank Road, Liverpool
Jane Stringer (née Steward 1833-1905) (by descent from the above, her husband)
Offered by Mrs Rathbone's executors, sale, Christie's, London, February 24, 1906, lot 115
Harold Steward Rathbone (1858-1929) of Haydock Lodge, Haydock, Newton le Willows, Lancashire (acquired at the above sale and sold:
Christie's, London, April 26, 1909, lot 115 (as Marble Benches)
William Woodward, 67 Avenue Road, Regent's Park (and sold: his posthumous sale, Christie's, London, February 14, 1913)
William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (and sold: his sale, Knight, Frank & Rutley, London, June 15-18, 1926, lot 192)
Sale: Christie's, London, February 11, 1927, lot 158
With a dealer in Knaresborough, Yorkshire in 1951
Sale: Sotheby's, London, October 31, 1951, lot 80
J.J. Gillespie's Gallery, Pittsburgh
Private collection
Thence by descent

Well-known from an illustration in Baldry's monograph on Moore, The Marble Seat has been celebrated as a pivotal work in the emergence of Aestheticism in the 1860s, along with such iconic pictures as Rossetti's Bocca Baciata, Watt's Wife of Pygmalion and Burne-Jones' Green Summer. That it has remained "lost" for many years makes the re-emergence of this picture a significant and important rediscovery of a transitional painting in Moore's oeuvre and an important addition to the canon of Aestheticism. It marks the artist's move away from historical drama to the abstracted and essentially narrative-free Aestheticism that Moore made his forte, a combination of Classical and Japanese simplicity with harmonious color and balanced composition. Based on a group of figures depicted in the east pediment of the Parthenon, the painting demonstrates Moore's adherence to classical style: the frieze format, flowing drapery, and physical types are all based upon Greek and Roman art. The inclusion of a nude ephebe was also likely based upon vase decoration and sculpture from Antiquity and there is no insinuation of any sensuality. The fact that he is naked was important to Moore who was considered innocent of the more salacious symbolism found in the contemporary work of his friends Simeon Solomon and Whistler.

The Marble Seat was owned by the Liverpool collector and Justice of the Peace Philip Henry Rathbone who also owned Moore's other Academy exhibit of 1865 The Shulamite, a large painting that hung in his dining room until his death when it was bequeathed to the Walker Art Gallery. Rathbone had been born into a wealthy family of Nonconformists and Radicals and although he worked as an underwriter and loss adjuster for the insurance company of Rathbone, Martin and Company, he was less interested in accumulating wealth than he was in philanthropy and social reform. He cultivated a bohemian attitude to art and was not shy of controversy. He was a strong supporter of the nude in art, rallying to support Alma-Tadema when the nudity of The Sculptor's Model was condemned. Rathbone wrote; "In Albert Moore we shall have cramped into domestic decoration a genius whose grace of line remains upon private canvases instead of upon public walls, but whose nobility of idea and conception has had absolutely no field for expansion" (The Encouragement of Monumental Forms of Art, 1889, p. 349).

After Philip Rathbone's death the painting remained with his widow at their home in Liverpool and following its unsuccessful sale at Christie's in 1906 after Mrs Rathbone's death, the picture was returned to her fourth and favourite son, Harold. Harold Rathbone was a poet and artist who trained under Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Art and was a studio assistant to Ford Maddox Brown, helping him to paint the murals at Manchester Town Hall. His portrait by William Holman Hunt is at the Walker Art Gallery. He was also the founder of the della Robia factory in Merseyside but sadly his eyesight began to fade and he eventually went blind.

When the picture was sold in 1913 it was bought by William Hesketh, 1st Lord Leverhulme for the collection of modern art that he was forming, which included many of the most famous paintings of the Victorian era. Leverhulme also owned Cherry Blossom (present whereabouts unknown) and Lilies (Sterling and Francis Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts) by Moore, both of which were sold and sadly the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, which Hesketh built and endowed in memory of his wife, does not have a painting by Albert Moore in its collection.