Nature

Albert Moore

1868

Wood engraving by W. J. Palmer

3¾ x 2¾ inches

Illustration for Milton’s Hymn on Christ’s Nativity, 1868, p.13.

Moore at his most austere, with the formal elements reduced to a startling simplicity and directness. Though nominally a grieving figure, the illustration invites the viewer to read it as a patterned arrangement of lines and shapes in which the arabesques created by the drapery are contrasted with the repeated horizontals of the background: Aestheticism at its purest.

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