Left: Shells, by Albert Moore, ARWS (1841-1893). Oil on canvas. 62 x 27 1/2 inches (157.5 x 70 cm). Collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG2286. Image courtesy of the Walker Art Gallery, reproduced via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on this image for a larger picture.] Right: Sea-Shells 1875. Oil on canvas. 30 1/4 x 14 1/8 inches (79.5 x 36 cm). Perez Simon collection, image © 2008 Christie's Images Limited. [Right click disabled; not to be reproduced.]
This subject exists in two versions, differing in size and colourways. The larger work Shells was commissioned by Frederick Leyland and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, no. 936. The second, half-size version, is dated 1875. A preliminary study in black and white chalk on brown paper suggests that at one time Moore considered having the model turned more to the left rather than looking straight ahead. Both finished versions feature a solitary woman in classical garb standing on a sandy beach. Gregory Hedberg has noted that the pose of the figure was influenced by that of a Venus Pudica (Venus of Modesty) from classical sculpture. Hedberg also explained why Moore frequently chose to paint different versions of the same subject, almost identical in composition, but completely different in colour:
The fact that Moore would execute several variations of a composition reflects the importance placed on color and the low regard he had for subject matter. Another practical factor was the elaborate and time-consuming creative process Moore evolved for completing the composition of a painting … before beginning to execute a canvas, he made countless preliminary drawings and oil studies of figures, drapery, and accessories, as well as elaborate compositional cartoons. As it often took several months for Moore to perfect a composition, he logically might on occasion prefer to execute a second version of the painting rather than begin the lengthy process anew. Characteristically, Baldry records that during the preparation for Shells and Sea-Gulls, Moore contrived a special revolving fan, which worked at high velocity to produce a strong air current to blow the draperies of his models as if they were on a wind-swept beach. [148]
When one compares Shells to Sea-Shells, major colour alterations as well as subtle compositional changes can be noted. Shells proves to be the more effective of the two. The colour scheme in Shells is dominated by brown in the beach sand and an orange gown covered with fluttering white drapery. The model wears an orange cap and her necklace is white. The sky colour is a darker, more ominous appearing grey. In Sea-Shells the sand is a grey-green colour and the model wears a pale green gown, again with similar fluttering white drapery. She wears a white cap and her necklace is a dark blue colour. The sky is again overcast but the clouds are not as dark. The rocks and shells in the foreground and midground are arranged somewhat differently from Shells. The fluttering drapery may have been influenced by Frederic Leighton's earlier Greek Girls Picking up Pebbles by the Sea that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871.
At this time Moore frequently made replicas of his paintings and applied different colour schemes to identical compositions. Although he was criticized for this, Moore's position was defended in an article in The Art Journal in 1893 following the artist's death:
People have misconceived his intentions, and in this misconception have accused him of many deficiencies, failing to see that these very deficiencies were the essential characteristics of his work. He painted without subject, without emotion, without dramatic incident or incidental motive…. People said he was narrow, and he repeated himself, using over again and again ideas which were too slight to bear reiteration; but they were blind to the fact that this repetition was a progressive development of a particular brand of study.... Beauty of colour, of form, of line, of type, was the chief motive of every picture that he ever produced.... People talked nonsense about him as "a painter of Greek maidens." He was nothing of the kind. He painted draperies because they are more beautiful than modern dress; he painted women because in their faces and figures beauty shows more plainly than in any other created thing; he painted faces without emotion because emotion distorts the features and destroys beauty of form. His art was Greek in nothing but its simplicity and single-mindedness. [334-35]
Left: Preliminary Study for Shells. Black and white chalk on brown wove paper. 12 1/4 x 53/4 inches (31.1 x 14.7 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of the author. Right: Study for Shells. Coloured pastels on tan paper. 16 7/16 x 7 5/8 inches (41.7 x 19.4 cm). Collection of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, object no. 1943.725. Image courtesy of Harvard Art Museums, reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research.
There is a drawing in coloured pastels on tan paper, c.1873-74, that relates to this subject at Harvard Art Museums (object no. 1943.725). The colours of the pastel do not correspond to those in Shells and the background is entirely different. The pose of the figure and the design of the draperies are identical, however, to the painting.
Contemporary Reviews of Shells
When Shells was exhibited at the Royal Academy the picture, as usual, received its share of criticism from critics who did not understand the aims of Moore's art. Moore, however, received praise from the critic of The Art Journal of 1874 — possibly the same one who wrote the measured assessment of his work in the journal in 1893. The review is an exhaustive one, first noting the usual criticisms of Moore (that he paints neither "incidents of the social world of the present day" nor "mimetic history out of old costume," and includes neither "sentiment or passion"), but nevertheless going on to describe the painting appreciatively, enjoying, for example, the woman's "delicate expression of enjoyment and delight in the harmless conflict with the gentle wind." Admitting that Moore's "figures miss the weight and mastery of feeling we find imagined in the figures of most of the supreme masters of Italy," this reviewer still responded positively to the "beauty of form" in his painting:
it is better that painting should be judged according to its own aims, without being either praised or blamed for what it never sought to express…. His work does not either directly or impliedly seek to condemn other and different ideals: it only claims to be judged by its own chosen standard. And what this standard really is may be understood by the fact that the artist declines to attempt the interpretation of the emotions which govern or influence his age….The attitude of Mr. Moore may therefore be summed up in saying that he rejects all material which does not in some way lend itself to the perfecting of his single ideal…. There is no source of beauty so persistently neglected by modern Art as beauty of form, and it must be regarded as matter for congratulations rather than an occasion of discouragement when a painter, even though he work alone, undertakes to lead back the thought of the time to a forgotten ideal … in certain respects Mr. Moore must be regarded as the most profound and earnest student of form in Art, England now possesses For if we turn to this work we shall find that the artist is pursuing no unreal or intangible ideal: his art has as close a contact with nature as can be got, and the beauty he seeks to present to us, the grace he contrives to secure, is genuinely derived from the actual and simple movements of living men and women. And thus it happens that his sympathy with the motive of classical Art is not more than his profound observation of life as he sees it now. The attitude chosen in this picture is a simple and natural attitude, easily credible to us, and yet made graceful by the artist's skill in abstracting it from the range of common impressions.
Most would now agree that this praise was entirely warranted. Yet one reservation remained. The reviewer granted that
On the side of colour Mr. Moore's work is more limited, and governed more by rule. The scheme he sets forth here fulfills all the necessities of pure decorative Art in their harmonious balance and arrangement of different hues distributed carefully over the picture, and the influence of the light kept everywhere subdued, is recorded with great delicacy of perception and executive power. But there is a clearest separation from a harmony secured in this way by observance of definite laws of colour, and the higher gifts of the colourist who chooses each tint within an instinctive knowledge of its special value to the particular subject. Employed in this way colour is capable of exercising a high imaginative influence, and helps as much to the expression of an idea as any other element in the work. So far as can yet be seen Mr. Moore does not affect this noble use of colour; he makes no blunder in his work because he has studiously considered the possibilities of agreement between various tints, but he scarcely strives to do more than complete a pattern made out upon the general and accepted principles of the craft. [197]
Looking askance at the colour, especially, a reviewer for The Architect was more critical of Moore's submission: "Mr. Albert Moore's Shells (936), although we must note failure to some extent against the too rigid fluttering drapery of this semi-classic figure, and cannot admire the result, albeit we recognize the intention of the scheme of fawn, green and scarlet colour; the fawn is muddy, and the scarlet is two brick-toned" (264). F.G. Stephens in his initial assessment in The Athenaeum merely commented: "Mr. A. Moore sends a decorative painting of the higher class in Shells (600). In a later review in that same publication Stephens expanded upon his comments for some reason, once again criticizing Moore's draughtsmanship: "In the Lecture-Room is Mr. A. Moore's fine piece of decorative art, styled Shells (936), a noble study of colour,— a full-length, upright figure of a nymph of a stream, — a study of a high kind, which should have been better drawn if the artist cared for his own reputation or respected the spectator" (766).
Surprisingly, W.M. Rossetti in The Spectator felt that the hard line demarcating the junction of the sea and sky ruined the picture:
We acknowledge the grace and sweetness of Mr. Albert Moore's figure, the same that he has often painted, and which he now calls Shells (936); but we find the rippling sand on which she walks so substantial and so perfect in perspective, that we want to see more of the scene and know more of the general state of affairs. And again, if we step back far enough to take in the whole painting as a piece of decoration, we behold a hard blue line of the sea horizon, which cuts it in two and destroys it altogether. And moreover, we wholly declined to accept the theory laid down by some critics, that this action of resistance to the effect of wind on light drapery is by itself a sufficient motive for a large oil picture. [691]
F.T. Palgrave in The Academy also felt that Moore's focus on decorative arrangements limited the scope of his accomplishments as an artist:
Mr. A. Moore, after promising much manlier and more varied art, has for the present settled into a style of his own. His are the figures in Grecian dress, graceful and languorous in attitude, rendered as if the "tinted sculpture," which we know of through theories rather than anything more substantial, were always before the artist's mind. The tints are chosen and balanced with singular refinement; and although I doubt whether so much be gained in the way of praise or justification, as the admirers of the style appeared to believe, by calling it "decorative art," yet, within the very narrow compass selected, Mr. Moore has truly worked out his idea and made his mark. But it is one thing to succeed so far, another to reach such a success as the possibilities of the art admit. These, of course, are but slightly exhausted within the limits found here; compared to painting in its full scale of colour, design, and subject, this style is like an organ played only on the flute or hautboy stop, and an organ played "through all its diapason." Hence also, anything short of such completeness as Mr. Moore has gained will be feeble and unsatisfying. [615]
Bibliography
"Albert Moore." The Art Journal LV (1893): 334-35.
Asleson, Robyn. Albert Moore. London: Phaidon, 2000. 119-25.
Baldry, Alfred Lys. Albert Moore: His Life and Works. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894. 83-84.
Hedberg, Gregory. "Albert Moore." The Victorian High Renaissance. London: Lund Humphries, 1978, cat. 75, 146-48.
19th Century European Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours. New York: Christie's (18 February 2008): lot 135.
"Painting at the Royal Academy." The Architect XI (9 May 1874): 264.
Palgrave, Francis Turner. "Fine Art. Royal Academy Exhibition." The Academy V (30 May 1874): 614-16.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Art. The Royal Academy." The Spectator XLVII (30 May 1874): 691-93.
"The Royal Academy" The Art Journal New Series XIII (1874): 197-201.
Shells. Art UK. Web. 30 August 2026.
Spaulding, Frances. Magnificent Dreams. Burne-Jones and the late Victorians. New York, E. P. Dutton. 58-59.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2427 (2 May 1874): 599-602.
_____. "Fine Arts. The Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2432 (6 June 1874): 766-67.
Created 30 August 2026