Rose Leaves by Albert Joseph Moore, ARWS (1841-1893). Oil on canvas. 27 ½ x 19 inches (68.5 x 48.2 cm). Whereabouts unknown. Image capture and formatting by George P. Landow, taken from Magazine of Art XVII (1894): 364.
Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan
Moore exhibited Rose Leaves at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880, no. 105. It is a study for the figure to the right in Dreamers that he was to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1882, although using a different colour scheme and accessories. In Rose Leaves, the maiden in pink and white drapery stares ahead with half-closed eyes, sitting on a sofa, her right leg resting on the floor while her left leg is bent at the knee and drawn up onto the sofa. Although the picture is unlocated, A.L. Baldry has described its composition:
The colour scheme of Rose Leaves is gayer and more delicate than that of Jasmine. The area of the white surfaces is larger, and the reds used are paler and more tender. The pose of the figure is also different, for while Jasmine is a study of one of the two sleeping girls in Dreamers, it is a third and wakened one that is represented in Rose Leaves. She is lightly wrapped in folds of the thinnest white muslin, and lounges on a creamy white sofa embroidered with purple, pale red, yellow, green, and black. There are loose pieces of pale rose pink drapery on the sofa by her side and fastened to the brown and white patterned wall behind her head. A white fan is at her left hand, and at her feet, a pink rug with centre of purple, pale green, and white, on which stands a white jar ornamented with lines of yellow brown, and holding white flowers and sprigs of yellow mimosa. In her fair hair is a yellow rose, and some rose petals lie on the brown and white marble floor to the left of the rug. [50]
At least two other versions of this composition exist, but the colour schemes are different. A Siesta, for instance, is a harmony of red and white, while Musk is an arrangement in orange, yellow, green and white. In Musk the woman's head is turned to her right and the sofa and background are greatly simplified and not so decorative.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
Cosmo Monkhouse in The Academy found himself slightly disappointed in Moore's submissions to the Grosvenor: "Though Mr. Moore's supreme talent for harmonious arrangement of colours has not deserted him, his figures in Jasmine (95) and Rose Leaves (105) fail to reach his accustomed level of simple grace (347). The reviewer for The Architect found nothing new in Moore's submissions this year: "Under the same head, with more strictness of course, fall Mr. Albert Moore's studies of single figures, under the titles of Jasmine and Rose Leaves; but there is absolutely nothing fresh to be said of these studies, one of which, at all events, has been seen already" (318).
A critic for The Times, likely Tom Taylor, praised the colour but had concerns regarding draughtsmanship, both in Jasmine and Rose Leaves, considering them to be "among the most voluptuous and delicious of his combinations of colour, true feasts of the eye. He has never used diaphanous draperies with such exquisite effect, or so successfully combined tender tones of rose and peach blossom in subtle and half transparent harmonies with such consummately calculated tones of grey. To this, however, our praise of the pictures must be limited. The attitudes of the figures under these delicate draperies are not easy, nor is the drawing of them unimpeachable" (qtd. in The Artist, 183). The Telegraph liked the work but also had some concerns: "Semi-sensuous gems of decoration such as Mr. A. Moore delights to paint. In drawing his attitudes are, this year, somewhat overstrained; and in one or two instances the foreshortening does not seem to be strictly accurate" (qtd. in The Artist, (183).
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum also questioned Moore's draughtsmanship: while appreciating his characteristic style, "delicate feeling for colour, and taste for statuesque draperies," he noted "extraordinary disproportions" in some of his work, such as Jasmine — and Rose Leaves. "Here the size of the feet is prodigious," he complained, "and we have failed to account for the relative positions of the limbs and torso" (606). Like many, the critic for The Building News praised the colouring of Moore's decorative works: "We may begin by noticing the pretty decorative studies of Mr. A. Moore, Jasmine (95) and Rose Leaves (105), the latter remarkable chiefly for the soft glow of bright delicate tints in light pink and red.... Jasmine is a girl lying on a couch asleep, covered with gauzy drapery of the poetic colour; while Rose Leaves is shown by a maiden reclining on a seat wrapped in the same transparent fabric, revealing the figure, and against a delicate background of a chintz pattern" (534-35). The Portfolio gave the work one of its most favourable reviews: "Mr. A. Moore's Rose Leaves is a lovely female figure, nude but for a transparent gauze drapery that enfolds without hiding the rose-leaf tinted flesh beneath; the rosy fingers and toes are visible, and the accessories are of a slightly deeper rose and white" (104).
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Bibliography
"Art Chronicle." The Portfolio XI (1884): 103-108.
Asleson, Robyn. Albert Moore. London: Phaidon, 2000. 166, 225n.131.
Baldry, Alfred Lys. Albert Moore: His Life and Works. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894. 49-50.
Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes III (May 1880): 33.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Architect XXIII (8 May 1880): 317-18.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Artist I (June 1880): 183.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Building News XXXVIII (7 May 1880): 534-35.
Monkhouse, Cosmo. "Fine Art. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Academy XVII (8 May 1880): 347-48.
Nineteenth Century European Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. London: Sotheby's (17 June 1986): lot 45.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Athenaeum No. 2741 (8 May 1880): 605-07.
Walker, Robert. "Private Picture Collections in Glasgow and West of Scotland: Mr. William Connal's Collection of works by Albert Moore." The Magazine of Art. XVII (1894): 360-67. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 7 September 2013.
Created 7 September 2013
Last modified 7 September 2026