An Open Book

Albert Joseph Moore's 1884 'An Open Book,' a work on paper in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection, belongs to a body of intimate smaller-scale studies in which Moore distilled his aesthetic philosophy to near-essentials. Moore's practice was built on the conviction — shared with Whistler, though the two men's relationship was contentious — that the purpose of pictorial art was not narrative but sensory harmony. A figure reading, absorbed in a book, offered the possibility of pure visual music: the arrangement of drapery colours, the rhythm of a reclining or seated body, unencumbered by dramatic event. The paper support rather than canvas suggests this is a study or a work in watercolour or gouache medium, consistent with Moore's practice of making preparatory works that were sometimes exhibited as finished pieces in their own right. The date 1884 places it within Moore's most productive mature period, when his colour sensibility was at its most refined.

Working on paper required Moore to adapt his layering methods from oil painting toward a more immediate touch. The work likely deploys careful washes of colour to build the figure's drapery, with fine linear detailing for the figure's features and the book's surface. The paper ground gives the palette a warmth and intimacy that distinguishes these works from his large-scale canvases.