All Art Constantly Aspires to the Condition of Music Georgione

Moore_Albert_Joseph_Dreamers-2

Albert Joseph Moore (1841 – 1893) was born in York to a family of artists. His father William Moore was a successful portraitist and his brother, Henry Moore, was a well-known marine painter.[1] At the age of fifteen Albert Moore had already exhibited at the Royal Academy.[2] After experimenting with natural history, sacred and decorative subjects Moore then turned his attending to expressing sensual female figures in grandiose and classical settings.

First exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882, Dreamers depicts something of a mystery (Fig. 1).[iii] In a classical setting ii of the three female figures clad in flowing drapery announced to be in a deep sleep whilst one figure appears to be heedless. The luminous sheers of gilded and ivory hues combined with the Greek and Japanese elements takes the viewer into a fantasy dream-like world, similar to that occupied by the figures in the painting.

The dream-similar effect conveyed in the painting is non due just to the limited palette but also to the fluid and rhythmic motion of the figures' positions. The incandescent ivory drapery is delicately interwoven and looped around the three seated figures suggesting a direct horizontal line. This echoes the sheer bunting behind the figures' heads that parallels another horizontal line. These suggestive planes are supported and assorted past vertical lines, which appear alongside the Greek window lattice, creating a grid-like effect on the overall composition. It is this geometric construction, combined with the position of the figures, which helps convey an underlying resemblance to a musical score.

The grid result could exist Moore's attempt to combine a theory by David Ramsay Hay (1798 – 1866). Hay claimed that the combination of 'colour to numerical ratios of various notes in the diatonic scale [with] line to the angles [relate] to the harmonic ratios of musical scores'.[4]That is to say, by incorporating this technique, Moore was establishing the correlation between colour, maths and music into his painting to evoke a sensory aesthetic experience, as is demonstrated in an before painting A Musician (Fig. ii). Capturing the sensory consequence of music and visual arts was popular during the Aesthetic Movement, namely due to essays and theories such every bit Immanuel Kant's Critique of Sentence (1790), Charles Baudelaire's De la coueleur (1846) and Walter Pater'south The Schoolhouse of Giorgione (1877).[5] Pater summed it up perfectly in his essay in which he famously claimed, 'All fine art constantly aspires toward the condition of music'.[half dozen]

Like many of the paintings from this flow, the aesthetic experience conveyed through Moore'southward paintings is devoid of any moral, social or political meanings and narratives. Instead, the primary concern of this painting is to convey beauty through emphasis on formal compositional elements. Once more, this links dorsum to music as  Oscar Wilde  once pointed out 'what is true near music is truthful about all the arts. […] Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses zilch.'[7] In this sense Wilde explained how music – as pleasing as it is to the ear – is absent-minded of any articulate story, much similar Moore'southward painting.

The emphasis on beauty and lack of narrative is besides revealed past the Greek and Japanese influences in the painting. The draped figures was 'probably derived […] from classical Greek sculpture and painting, in which […] draped females are the rule'.[8] The Japanese influence, as suggested by the fan, is besides suggested by the lack of color scheme which is reminiscent of Japanese prints.[9] Artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) compared the limited palette in paintings to embroidery by stating that colour should be similar to threads which 'announced here and there' and links this systematic colour scheme to Japanese artists to whom he claims, 'they never look for contrast […] they're after repetition'.[x] A technique which Moore also demonstrated in a similar painting The Shulamite (Fig.3). It would seem, therefore, that Moore'south objective was combining two dissimilar cultural elements and techniques to create a purely decorative composition which leads the spectator into some other globe.

Moore combined different cultural elements and techniques to create a canvas total of harmonious sequenced rhythms devoid of whatever kinds of narrative. Although the absent narrative was a key component in the Artful Movement, Moore withal received criticism for his painting due to its lack of subject area. Fine art Historian Sidney Colvin, who wrote the first article on Moore for Portfolio periodical (1870), stated that the painting 'failed to suggest farther layers of expressive or spiritual significance beyond the visible forms on the canvass'.[11] Still it would seem that was not the painting'southward intention. Rather, the painting was to create an escape for the spectator by functioning purely on visual techniques. The express color palette, the fluid drapery, the cultural combination of Greek and Japanese styles and the languid figures ambiguously placed similar musical notes across a stave, has captured a beauty that aims to aesthetically appeal to the senses.

– Katrina Penney


[one]    Robyn Asleson, Albert Moore, (London: Phaidon, 2000) p. 10, 13

[2]    Asleson, p.xiv

[iii]    Asleson, p.155

[four]    Asleson, p.96

[v]    Asleson, p.94

[vi]    Walter Pater, 'The Schoolhouse of Giorgione', The Renaissance, ed. Donald Hill, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980) p. 106

[vii]    Oscar Wilde, 'The Critic as Artist', The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde, (London: Wodsworth, 1997) p.989

[8]    Asleson, p.fourscore

[9]    Asleson, p.99

[x]  Asleson, p. 99

[11]  Elizabeth Prettejohn, 'Albert Moore', Art for Art'due south Sake, (New Haven and London: Yale Academy Press, 2007) p.104

– Katrina Penney


[1]   Robyn Asleson, Albert Moore, (London: Phaidon, 2000) p. x, p. 13

[2]   Asleson, p.14

[3]   Asleson, p.155

[iv]   Asleson, p.96

[5]   Walter Pater, 'The School of Giorgione', The Renaissance, ed. Donald Hill, (Los Angeles: University of California Printing, 1980) p. 106

[6]   Oscar Wilde, 'The Critic every bit Artist', The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde, (London: Wodsworth, 1997) p.989

[vii]   Asleson, p.80

[viii]   Asleson, p.99

[ix]   Asleson, p. 99

[x] Elizabeth Prettejohn, 'Albert Moore', Art for Art's Sake, (New Oasis and London: Yale University Press, 2007)p.104

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