Elijah's Sacrifice. 1863. Oil on canvas. 38 3/8 x 68 1/2 inches (97.5 x 174 cm). Collection of Bury Art Museum, accession no. 0245:1908. Image courtesy of Bury Art Museum via Art UK, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Moore exhibited Elijah's Sacrifice, his most ambitious work to date at this nascent period of his career, at the Royal Academy in 1865, no. 615. The painting had been rejected the year prior. It was accompanied in the catalogue by this quotation from I Kings XVIII, 38-39: "Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God." As told in the book of Kings, Israel had gone more than three years without rain as God's judgment for the Israelites worshipping false gods. Elijah challenged the false prophets of Baal to prepare a bull as an offering to their god, while Elijah would do the same, but no fires were to be lit. The God who answered with fire from the sky would then be considered the true God by the Israelites. The prophets of Baal went first with no success. Elijah then dug a trench around the altar he had prepared, placed wood on the altar, and laid cut pieces of the bull upon it. Next, he had the people soak the altar with twelve large jars of water. The fire of the Lord then fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice and the prophets of Baal were put to death. With this, the drought ended and rain once more fell upon the land. In Moore's depiction of the story, Elijah and his followers are to the far right quietly praying. The men in the centre cover their faces with their hands as the sacrifice is consumed by fire. The main prophet of Baal rises up from his kneeling position and covers his eyes with his right hand. Some men to the far left look upon the scene with amazement and alarm as they recognize the true God of Israel.
This picture was begun in the winter of 1862-63. A.L. Baldry has described its genesis:
This was painted almost entirely in Rome from Italian models and the landscape background was adapted from a desolate spot in the district between Rome and Tivoli… in design and in arrangement of both colour and line, shows an extraordinary advance upon anything that the young artist had done before…His treatment of colour was still reserved and sombre; and he still inclined to an effect that would be weighty and impressive rather than brilliant. It was certainly such an inclination that governed him in the production of this picture, in which the sunburnt skins of the priests; the black draperies striped with red and white and the deep red turban worn by Elijah; the subdued orange and green wrappings of the attendant "Sons of the Prophets," kneeling beside the circle of flames that occupy the centre of the canvas, are all set against a low-toned blue sky, and a range of deep bluish-purple hills. [28]
This was not the first work Moore had designed based on the biblical story of the prophet Elijah as he had exhibited his large sepia drawing of Elijah Running to Jezreel before Ahab's Chariot at the Royal Academy in 1861, no. 909.
Robyn Asleson has described the design of the picture:
The symmetrical composition enabled Moore to communicate the narrative through counterbalanced groups of contrasting figures. The prophet Elijah, whose eyecatching red turban and robustly patterned robe differentiate him from the other figures, kneels in solemn prayer at the right side of the blaze. On the left side, a naked priest of Baal recoils violently from the leaping flames, echoing while simultaneously distorting Elijah's reverential pose. The agitated figures beside him present heathen counterparts to the contemplative believers beside Elijah at the opposite end of the canvas. The two extremes are linked by the central group of bowed figures whose poses express mingled emotions of terror and shame…. Moore eschewed their rigorous treatment of depth. Rather than chart a measured recession from foreground to horizon, he compressed spatial relationships within the painting, treating the figures and sceneries as a series of flat, overlapping silhouettes. [36-37]
Asleson feels the composition may have been influenced by Michelangelo's The Last Judgment from the Sistine Chapel and was the first picture in which Moore emulated the appearance of fresco (37). This visit to Rome and the exposure to the art he saw there was to have a profound influence on his own future work, particularly his shift away from religious subjects to Aesthetic Classicism.
Allen Staley has pointed out that this painting marked a new direction in Moore's art, particularly in the incorporation of nude figures, suggesting that Moore must have devoted time to studying classical sculpture while in Rome, and also to drawing the nude figure, probably in a life class at the British Academy or elsewhere:
The painting was Moore's largest and most ambitious work to date. It contains some fourteen figures, most of whom, apart from Elijah, are nude or semi-nude. All are male. According to verse 39 of the biblical account, when the people saw the sacrifice they fell on their faces in acknowledgement of the Lord. Accordingly all are on their knees. The most prominent three figures facing us in the center of the composition are bent low with their heads in their hands. Next to them, a man more upright, but still on his knees, twists away and shields his face from a rising flame. The assured and bold articulation of the bodies of these figures constituted a large step forward signalling a new direction in Moore's artistic progress. [123]
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
A critic for The Art Journal gave this work an extensive but very mixed review:
It is impossible not to observe a marvellous, we had almost said an outrageous, though clever picture, Elijah's Sacrifice (615), painted by A. Moore…. The merit of this picture is surpassed by its eccentricity. On the favourable side of the account must be placed the conscientious study thrown into the figures and accessories. The heads and the hands are drawn with accuracy; the drapery is detailed; the background of mountains, and the foreground of earth and herbage, and especially the lambent flame that 'licked up the water,' are severely painted with knowledge and intent. Nevertheless, there is no use disguising the fact that the picture is bizarre and all but ridiculous. This unfortunate termination to a great labour results from the contempt shown for beauty, from the deliberate choice of grotesque forms and attitudes, and from the preponderance of a bricky and obnoxious colour. We shall look forward with interest to see whether the independent power wherewith Mr. Moore is gifted will enable him to throw off a mannerism which, if persisted in, cannot but prove fatal. [163]
F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum found this a powerful work full of poetic spirit:
Among the most striking pictures here are two very original works by Mr. A. Moore, both in the North Room, having diverse subjects, so as to show his wealthy invention and scope of artistic power. The largest is Elijah's Sacrifice (615) - the descent of the fire of the Lord upon the prophet's offering. Mr. Moore paints in a dry and fresco-like manner, so that his work will not catch the popular eye; it is, nevertheless, full of poetic spirit, grave in conception of the subject and passionate; the people, who are on their knees around the altar of sacrifice, crouch, and their arms are crossed above their heads before the descending flame: this is an action of the most expressive character; the fire flickers in the air like a great tongue, and runs around the trench holding the water; the conception of Elijah's figure is anything but what the old masters were accustomed to design. [658]
A reviewer for The Illustrated London News was impressed as well, feeling that this work predicted great works to come from this young painter: " We are glad to observe in the works of Mr. A. Moore (a very young artist, we believe) a feeling for largeness and sober dignity of style rare among English painters, conjoined - see his Elijah's Sacrifice (615) - with an original dramatic imaginativeness which, unless we are greatly mistaken, will be productive of noble results" (451).
W.M. Rossetti in The Spectator also thought Moore's work showed potential despite its eccentricities: "There are two pictures in the North room little likely to catch general approbation, yet both deserving some attention. One is Mr. A. Moore's Elijah's Sacrifice (615), in which notwithstanding unnecessary affectation (as it seems) of austerity and quaintness, there is a substratum of intense feeling, which lude good guidance might lead to great results" (696). Rossetti discussed this picture again in Fraser's Magazine, reporting it as very fine and of unusual quality despite some limitations:
Besides his classical subject, Mr. Moore sends a work of higher importance in Elijah's Sacrifice. We see here "the fire of the Lord" falling to consume the sacrifice, and the awe-struck attitude of the people at the portent. This picture can hardly reckon as more than a section of the whole subject, for the offering to Baal is not included in it, and the people are a mere handful. The over-meekness of Elijah, and the absolutely negative lighting of the picture, the supernal fire itself making no difference whatever, are positive objections; and the arms of the figures generally seem stunted. Still, this is a picture of very fine and unusual quality: the actions are grand in simplicity and consent; and the flame, if necessarily to some extent conventional, like the lighting of the picture generally, is nobly indicated, licking and flickering in orange-vermilion wreaths, with a strange look of truth and of wonderfulness. [747]
Bibliography
Asleson, Robyn. Albert Moore. London: Phaidon, 2000, 36-39.
Baldry, Alfred Lys. Albert Moore: His Life and Works. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894. 20, 28, 30, 102.
Elijah's Sacrifice. Art UK. Web. 22 August 2026.
"Fine Arts. Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XLVI (13 May 1865): 451.
Green, Richard. Albert Moore and his Contemporaries. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Laing Art Gallery, 1972, cat. 5, 12-13.
Hedberg, Gregory. "Albert Moore." The Victorian High Renaissance. London: Lund Humphries, 1978, cat. 67, 138-39.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. Art for Art's Sake. Aestheticism in Victorian Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. 105.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Art. The Royal Academy." The Spectator XXXVIII (June 24, 1865): 695-96.
_____. "The Royal Academy Exhibition." Fraser's Magazine LXXI (June, 1865): 736-53.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series IV (1 June 1865): 161-72.
Staley, Allen. "Albert Moore." The New Paintings of the 1860s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. 122-24.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1959 (13 May 1865): 657-58.
Created 22 August 2026