Lot 75: ALBERT JOSEPH MOORE A.R.W.S.

ALBERT JOSEPH MOORE A.R.W.S. BRITISH 1841-1893 STANDING FIGURE IN YELLOW AND ORANGE: STUDY FOR TOPAZ signed with anthemion (lower left) oil on canvas 33 3/4 by 13 in. 83.8 by 33 cm

Possibly, London, Grosvenor Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1880, no. 162 (lent by William Connal, Jr.)
Possibly, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1880, no. 358 (lent by William Connal, Jr.)

Possibly, "The Grosvenor Gallery," The Times, May 11, 1880, p. 8
Possibly, "The Grosvenor Gallery," The Building News, May 7, 1880, p. 535
Possibly, "Pictures of the Year," Magazine of Art , 1880, pp. 3,127;
Robert Walker, "Private Picture Collections in Glasgow and West of Scotland. Mr. William Connal's Collection of Works by Albert Moore," Magazine of Art, 1894, pp. 17-64
Alfred Lys Baldry, Albert Moore: His Life and Works, London, 1894, p. 49
Robyn Asleson, Albert Moore, London, 2000, p. 163

William Connal Jr., Glasgow (acquired in 1877 and sold: his sale, Christie's, London, March 14, 1908, lot 57 or 58)
Sulley (acquired at the above sale)
Scott & Fowles, New York (in 1927)
Sale: Christie's, London, June 25, 1937
Private Collector (and sold: Parke-Bernet, New York, November 26, 1943, lot 95)
Millicent Rogers, New York and Taos, New Mexico (acquired at the above sale and until 1953)
Thence by descent to the present owner

These two exquisite paintings exemplify the refined treatment of form and the delicate modulation of color that made Albert Moore a leading light of the British Aesthetic Movement. In contrast to the vast majority of his colleagues, Moore approached his art as an exploration of abstract formal qualities, rather than an illustration of a narrative or moral. Emulating the design principles he discerned in nature and the finest examples of art (including Greek sculpture and Japanese prints), Moore formulated a unique composition process in which the placement of every element—from the slightest stroke of color to a fold of drapery—was determined by an underlying grid of intersecting lines and curves. Traces of this grid are clearly visible beneath the translucent layers of paint in both of the present works, coinciding with the dominant lines of the composition as well as the placement of accessory elements, such as the foliage and Moore's trademark anthemion signature. The sheer beauty of Moore's paintings made them popular attractions at the Royal Academy and other mainstream exhibition venues, yet the radical aesthetic experiments that lay behind his pictures remained little understood during his lifetime.

The two present works originated with Moore's laborious preparations for his painting Topaz (private collection), exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879. During the two years that he labored over Topaz, Moore initiated numerous full-size figure and drapery studies in which he painstakingly rehearsed and revised the composition and tried out different color schemes. He further developed several of these studies as finished works of art. This pair is of particular significance in that it caught the eye of William Connal, a wealthy Glaswegian industrialist and collector of contemporary British Art. They were the first works by Moore to be purchased by Connal, who would go on to acquire Elijah's Sacrifice (1863, Bury City Art Gallery), Reading Aloud (1884, Victoria and Albert Museum), Yellow Marguerites (1881, private collection), and at least twelve other Moore pictures, as well as works by Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Whistler, and Watts. Connal ultimately became Moore's most important patron as well as a loyal friend. In 1880, while the artist was busy working on his ambitious multiple-figure painting A Summer Night (Liverpoool), Connal generously parted with the two Topaz studies for several months so that one could be shown at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the other at the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Although Moore had two more ambitious works on display at the Grosvenor, London critics took particular notice of the Topaz study and the Times reviewer considered it a "better example, on the whole, of the painter's best points," The Building News praised it as "graceful and decorative," while the Magazine of Art critic noted that Moore's "careful and solid drawing should certainly serve as an example to his brothers of the decorative school who still persist in making a deliberate and intentional archaism cover the faults of defective study."