The Green Butterfly (A Study in Yellow) . c.1878-81. Oil on canvas. 15 7/16 x 5 inches (39.2 x 12.7 cm). Collection of the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, object no. 1935-16. Image courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum.
Moore exhibited this small work at McLean's Gallery in London in 1881, where it was titled A Study in Yellow. Its original title was changed relatively early on, however, to The Green Butterfly, based on a letter dated 25 July 1906 from A.L. Baldry to the dealer David Croal Thompson of Agnew's: "That picture, The Green Butterfly, by Albert Moore, which you showed me recently, was painted about the beginning of the eighties. It is one of a series of small pictures which I saw in progress at that time" (Bancroft archive, qtd. R. Elzea 80). Although Baldry suggests a date of the early 1880s, and it was exhibited in 1881, Margaretta Frederick feels the date of the painting is unclear. The pose of the figure is very close to Marigolds, which Moore exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. The colour scheme is also similar to that of three of Moore's works dating from 1879-80 (see Fredericks 154).
The painting shows a young woman in a yellow classical gown with an orange cap standing on a white and red tile floor in front of a white wall and looking at a green butterfly. She wears a single strand of red coral beads around her neck. Rowland and Betty Elzea note that "the pose of this figure was probably suggested by Tanagra figurines, its precisely adjusted relationships of delicate color and shapes and the lines of the plants being cut by the edge of the picture, indicate the Japanese influence on Moore" (117). The green butterfly is a prominent feature of the composition, but it is not unique in this: butterflies appear in a number of Moore's works from this period, including his Yellow Marguerites of 1881, Acacias of 1882, and A Yellow Room of 1885. More distinctive, perhaps is the hint of spontaneity here, which, John Christian feels, "comes as something of a relief after the rather heavy type, based on Greek precedent, which the artist tended to favour" (129).
Bibliography
Baldry, Alfred Lys. Albert Moore: His Life and Works. London: George Bell and Sons, 1894. 104.
Christian, John. Victorian Dreamers. Masterpieces of Neo-Classical and Aesthetic Movements in Britain. Tokyo; The Tokyo Shimbun, 1989, cat. 52, 129.
Elzea, Rowland and Betty Elzea. The Pre-Raphaelite Era 1848-1914. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum,1976, cat. 5-10, 117.
Elzea, Rowland. The Pre-Raphaelite Collections of the Delaware Art Museum. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1984, 80-81.
Frederick, Margaretta S. Waking Dreams. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. Stephen Wildman Ed. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 2004, cat. 28, 154-55.
Created 7 September 2026