Left: Birds [Canaries], by Albert Joseph Moore, ARWS (1841-1893). 1878. Oil on canvas. 61 1/4 x 25 3/4 inches (155.4 x 65.3 cm). Collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, accession no. 1914P229. Image courtesy of Birmingham Museums Trust via the Google Art Project, under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero licence (CCO). Right: Birds of the Air. 1879. Oil on canvas. 34 1/4 x 14 1/4 inches (86.7 x 36.2 cm). Collection of Manchester Art Gallery, accession no. 1934.414. Image courtesy of the Manchester Art Gallery via Art UKunder the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
Moore exhibited Birds at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, no. 125, and then at the same venue A Study of Drapery for "The Birds," no. 59, the following year. It is possible that Birds of the Air began as a drapery study for Birds and then was later developed into a finished painting (Hedberg 150). Birds is a full-length picture of a standing woman in classical drapery, her head turned to the left and looking upwards, with her hands resting on her hips. It is primarily an arrangement in yellow, white and green. A.L. Baldry has described it in close detail:
The under drapery is pale, lemon colour, and over it is thin white muslin in ample and strongly marked folds. On the girl's head is an orange cap, and this colour is repeated in an orange, brown, white, and grey mat at her feet. The floor is laid in squares of green and white marble; the background is a grey hanging with brownish green embroidery; and round the upper part of the picture are festoons of white stuff, of somewhat heavy texture, patterned with red, yellow, and green. A glass vase with sprigs of leaves and white flowers stands on the left side of the picture, and the other accessories are a yellow canary on the floor and strings of black and white beads around the girl's neck. [48]
The similar picture entitled Birds of the Air, although smaller in size, was executed at around the same time. Its colour harmonies are slightly different, with a greater emphasis on grey in the over drapery and the background. Hedberg describes it as "a female Grecian figure wearing a yellow inner robe and orange cap who stands in a contrapposto pose with her hands on her hips. Behind is a cloth curtain and festooned draperies that close off the figure into a narrow space" (150).
Robyn Asleson has described how Moore used geometric principles in the design of his paintings, including this one:
Birds, which epitomizes Moore's mature preparatory techniques and executive skill, as well as the sophisticated approach to pattern engendered by his new interest in textile design. The geometric print of the wall hanging provides a finely textured backdrop to the picture's complex linear pattering, dominated by the diagonal pleats of filmy white drapery worn over the canary-yellow shift. Irregular swags of patterned cloth at the top of the picture provide graceful counterbalances to the rigid linearity of the marble floor and woven mat below. Full scale nude cartoons for this and a smaller version bear out the truth of [Sidney] Colvin's assertion that Moore conceived of the human figure "simply as the principal element in a pattern." The artist established the figure's proportions and placement through a complex network of intersecting circles traced by a compass…. Moore was unusual in employing a geometric system to determine not merely the internal proportions of his figures, but also their relationship to the overall picture-pattern, which was itself devised from this system of proportion. The anatomical "errors" occasionally noted by quibbling critics actually reflects Moore's adaptation of the human body to the same abstract ideal to which he accommodated flowers and foliage in his fabric patterns. On top of the system of intersecting curves, Moore juxtaposed a diaper pattern of curving diagonal and vertical lines. These construction lines also influenced the proportions and placement of the figures, the major drapery folds, and other elements of the composition. Moore's geometric diagrams are responsible for the satisfying orderliness of his paintings, enabling the artist to transform a cacophonous of patterns into a perfectly blended and harmonious picture. [146]
There is a cartoon in charcoal on brown paper of the nude female figure for Birds in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. D227-1905) The cartoon for Birds of the Air, in the same collection (accession no. D226-1905), shows the same nude figure but also incorporates Moore's geometric construction lines.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum, reporting on the second Grosvenor Gallery exhibition, found the work both refined and accomplished: "One other artist, and we must close. Mr. Albert Moore has two works, Birds (125) and another (126) unnamed [A Study], both refined and accomplished in the highest degree. These lovely figures are, besides, not emblematic: that troublesome class of young ladies had, we thought, been finally laid to rest thirty years ago, but here they are, all over the place" (642).
A reviewer for The Builder was fulsome in his praise considering the picture simply perfect:
We passed for the moment, purposely, Mr. Albert Moore's Birds, to finish with it, as something perfectly pleasant to look at and remember. The title is, of course, merely a distinguishing name for a figure picture: a beautiful girl stands facing us and looking up at some birds, probably (one canary is introduced, at her feet), so that her face appears turned upward, and half in profile; she has on a saffron gown, and a head-dress of very subdued and delicate reddish tint; she is backed by a delicately diapered hanging, and a plant with white blossoms springs from a vase by her side. In beauty of form, and subtle delicate harmony of colour, this seems to us almost to surpass anything of the kind that Mr. A. Moore has produced; it is simply perfect, and leaves a delightful impression on the memory. [448]
A critic for The Magazine of Art found Moore's work exquisite despite some flaws:
To a more purely decorative school – for he banishes emotion altogether – belongs an exquisite artist, Mr. Albert Moore, who has studied the treatment of draperies in the Greek rather than the Italian school, and who works in a key of colour, or rather of tinting, all his own. He has a way of throwing his flesh into half-shadow, whilst all the accessories are brilliant, and the colour of this half-shadow is objectionable – heavily grey with a tinge of violet; this is his one flaw as a colourist, and we have long remarked it. He draws very sufficiently well, but no more than that; and he has an intelligent energy of action which does not mar decorative repose; of this, his Birds is an example. His play on yellows is exquisitely fanciful and inventive, and in these fine variations he uses, as his strongest accent, orange colour – the one hue but universally avoided in art – with happy effect. [81]
Henry Blackburn, in his Grosvenor Notes, described Birds as a delicately conceived decoration: "A female figure (nearly life-size), standing with head raised, in soft white drapery and head-dress of deep orange; a glass bowl with white flowers, and a canary upon the ground; the background an embroidered curtain with red and yellow flowers on silver grey. A delicately conceived decoration, in which the prevailing colours are orange, canary, and silver" (42).
Frederic Wedmore in Temple Bar gave the most detailed analysis in praise of this painting:
At the Grosvenor, the more important of the two pictures (No. 125) is of a figure on a larger scale than Mr. Moore is accustomed to adopt, and perhaps here there is less than elsewhere of the obvious absence of any intention to represent an actual person in the ways of actual life. The light from above, the clear and yet soft light of this artist's usual choice, falls here on a figure, it may be, less abstract and statuesque than often before, a figure with a happy brilliance in the cool grey eyes, the face a little flushed, and lithe movement in the long throat; the head raised, and one hand poised on hip. The union of dignity and freedom in the gesture is that chosen only by an artist alive to the beauty of noble and lithe movement, and careless of all petty prettiness. The large grace of its supple lines, and the harmonies of light and delicate tints, secure for the work its due success in decorative art. The nobility and distinction of the type and the expression raise it, as Mr. Moore's is wont to be raised, above work purely decorative, while here in the realization of texture of fabrics and stones and glass – the hanging raiment, the figured curtain, the many-patterned rugs of Eastern design – the painter has submitted himself more completely than before to the conditions of imitative painting.
Wedmore then goes on to praise the painting's colour:
But its absolutely harmony of tints pale or bright – never dark, never low-toned – and so reaching effects of pleasantness from which the dark and low tones so precious in art are necessarily shut off – its absolute harmony of light and cheery tinting, is what, after all, you most remember. You remember an orange head-gear – turban, fez, or cap – which takes the colour out of the corn-coloured hair over which it fits and presses closely; the upturned face, soft, rose-colour, seen aslant, is almost profile; a greenish yellow robe over which trails a many-folded fabric, white and thin; orange brightening again the rugs of the marble floor; and, behind the figure, the glass vase, clear and very large, with the lovely stems and the white blossoms of flowers; and overall a thin, clean air and sunshiny light. [345-46]
Bibliography
Asleson, Robyn. Albert Moore. London: Phaidon, 2000. 143, 145-46.
_____. "Nature and abstraction in the aesthetic development of Albert Moore." In After the Pre-Raphaelites. Ed. Elizabeth Prettejohn. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 129-31.
Baldry, Alfred Lys. Albert Moore: His Life and Works. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894. 47-48.
Birds of the Air. Art UK. Web. 6 September 2026.
Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes I. London: Chatto and Windus (July 1878): cat. 125, 42.
Christian, John. Victorian Dreamers. Masterpieces of Neo-Classical and Aesthetic Movements in Britain. Tokyo: The Tokyo Shimbun, 1989, cat. 51, 129.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Builder XXXVI (May 4, 1878): 447-48.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Magazine of Art I (1878): 81-82.
Hedberg, Gregory. "Albert Moore." The Victorian High Renaissance. London: Lund Humphries, 1978, cat. 79, 150.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Grosvenor Gallery," The Athenaeum No. 2638 (18 May 1878): 642.
Wedmore, Frederic. "Some Tendencies in Recent Painting." Temple Bar LIII (July 1878): 334-48.
Created 6 September 2026