Roses

Albert Moore worked in search of ideal beauty. Throughout his career, he sought perfection both in the beauty of his figures, and in the decorative devices taken from close observation of nature which abound in his work. While his work has frequently been understood as decorative and beautiful, such descriptions fail to recognize the complicated abstract and analytical principles he explored in looking for a much deeper ‘ideal beauty’ than is visible at first glance. His experimentation in color was remarkable, and generations ahead of its time. Subject is largely secondary in Moore's work, with female models posed repeatedly in similar ways, but depicted with differing colorings and tonalities in an exploration of aesthetics, mood, and atmosphere. From the early 1870s, he began to use layered draperies, some opaque and some sheer, as a means to experiment with both color and line simultaneously. The drapery arrangements were achieved by 'never touching a fold with his hands, but having the model move again and again till he catches the desired effect' (H. Frederic quoted in R. Asleson, op.cit., p. 138), and the interplay of fabrics gave an almost infinite number of possible compositions. In the present work, the fabric is not sheer, but it's evident lightness gives the same sense of movement and range of color.
From the mid-1880s Moore began to experiment in pastel, and indeed this was a medium he came to use increasingly in the later years of his life. Roses, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885, is a particularly fine example of his use of this medium. According to Baldry it was a larger repetition of the theme of two watercolors, Oranges and Lanterns, which had been exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society earlier that year, in which he had 'aimed at the swing and play of moving draperies, and the pose and gesture of limbs rhythmically stirred' (op.cit, p. 59).