Study of a girl, wearing a long dress and stepping forward;
Albert Joseph Moore, ARWS 1841-1893
1872
Black and white chalks on pale brown pape
Dimensions: 14 x 8 1/4 inches, 35.5 X 21 cm.
For the drawing 'Design for a Picture'
The present drawing corresponds to the figure of a dancing girl on the right-hand side of the drawing entitled Design for a Picture which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum and which once belonged to Frederic Leighton. This composition was dated by Baldry to the early 1870s and like several of Moore's ambitious projects of this date was not realised as a finished picture.
Moore's longstanding interest in representing movement culminated in this period. His large canvas 'Follow, My Leader' (exhibited Royal Academy 1873, private collection) shows a group of running figures. Baldry records how he made his models run or play battledore and shuttlecock in his studio while he drew rapidly from life or from memory — foreshadowing Rodin in this. The present drawing is one of the few surviving examples of these vividly captured poses. — Hilary Morgan