DOI Heft:
No. 13 (April, 1894)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: Albert Moore, [1]
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17190#0016
Albert Moore
influence could be brought into competition with a colourist, as a painter of lovely faces, or as a
their own. They were vaguely conscious that, designer of pretty fancies, to refuse to him any
while on the common ground of technical per- position among contemporary manufacturers of
formance and executive skill, where all capable really serious art.
workers meet, he was worthy of a place among the Fortunately it is not by the verdict of his con-
best ; he was, as a teacher of advanced principles, temporaries that the place in the art history of the
and as one of the leaders of a growing opposition world due to such an artist as Albert Moore is de-
in the art world, likely to prove a dangerous com- termined. There is a far more impartial court of
panion. So they kept him outside the pale of appeal which will by-and-by have to pronounce
official recognition, and did what they could to judgment upon the questions at issue between
minimise his influence by the implication that, him and the present-day public; and for the
though skilful enough in his practice, he was on finding of this court we who believe in him
account of a certain deficiency in mental appreci- now are content to wait, feeling assured that his
ation of pictorial necessities, hardly worthy of a vindication will lack nothing of ultimate corn-
place among the elect. The public uneasily pleteness. All that can be done at present is
feeling that there must be in the work he was to clear away some of the more foolish miscon-
doing something more than the merely superficial ceptions about him, and to set down plainly
intention, were only too glad to adopt the official so much of his convictions as may be made
point of view, and, while recognising his claims as intelligible to the average mind.
In the first place, then,
Albert Moore was not a
painter of simple prettiness,
a pot-boiler who went on
repeating a certain type of
picture because he found it
saleable and generally popu-
lar. Neither was he a worker
of so little inventive power
that, having early in life
formed and elaborated one
particular idea, he was unable
in after years to improve upon
it. He was, instead, an artist
whose aims were distinct and
whose methods were scientific,
a producer of absolute indi-
vidualities, a student of original
expressions. He was not an
archaeologist striving fatuously
to reconstruct the life and
characteristics of centuries
long past, nor a painter of
pretty pruriencies angling for
the patronage of the man of
the world with the bait of half-
draped femininity. He was,
on the contrary, an artist of
to-day suggesting the art of
to-morrow; a designer of pic-
tures without passions and
without emotions. The inte-
rest of each work that he pro-
duced was included within the
jasmine ...... .. wtl .„ „ by albert moor four corners of the frame that
(By kind permission of Watson rothergill, Esq.)
influence could be brought into competition with a colourist, as a painter of lovely faces, or as a
their own. They were vaguely conscious that, designer of pretty fancies, to refuse to him any
while on the common ground of technical per- position among contemporary manufacturers of
formance and executive skill, where all capable really serious art.
workers meet, he was worthy of a place among the Fortunately it is not by the verdict of his con-
best ; he was, as a teacher of advanced principles, temporaries that the place in the art history of the
and as one of the leaders of a growing opposition world due to such an artist as Albert Moore is de-
in the art world, likely to prove a dangerous com- termined. There is a far more impartial court of
panion. So they kept him outside the pale of appeal which will by-and-by have to pronounce
official recognition, and did what they could to judgment upon the questions at issue between
minimise his influence by the implication that, him and the present-day public; and for the
though skilful enough in his practice, he was on finding of this court we who believe in him
account of a certain deficiency in mental appreci- now are content to wait, feeling assured that his
ation of pictorial necessities, hardly worthy of a vindication will lack nothing of ultimate corn-
place among the elect. The public uneasily pleteness. All that can be done at present is
feeling that there must be in the work he was to clear away some of the more foolish miscon-
doing something more than the merely superficial ceptions about him, and to set down plainly
intention, were only too glad to adopt the official so much of his convictions as may be made
point of view, and, while recognising his claims as intelligible to the average mind.
In the first place, then,
Albert Moore was not a
painter of simple prettiness,
a pot-boiler who went on
repeating a certain type of
picture because he found it
saleable and generally popu-
lar. Neither was he a worker
of so little inventive power
that, having early in life
formed and elaborated one
particular idea, he was unable
in after years to improve upon
it. He was, instead, an artist
whose aims were distinct and
whose methods were scientific,
a producer of absolute indi-
vidualities, a student of original
expressions. He was not an
archaeologist striving fatuously
to reconstruct the life and
characteristics of centuries
long past, nor a painter of
pretty pruriencies angling for
the patronage of the man of
the world with the bait of half-
draped femininity. He was,
on the contrary, an artist of
to-day suggesting the art of
to-morrow; a designer of pic-
tures without passions and
without emotions. The inte-
rest of each work that he pro-
duced was included within the
jasmine ...... .. wtl .„ „ by albert moor four corners of the frame that
(By kind permission of Watson rothergill, Esq.)