George Belton Moore (1806–1875) was an English artist who specialised in landscape, architectural and topographical composition, and often exhibited his work at the Royal Academy and British Institution. He was an influential drawing-master and the author of books on the principles of colour and perspective.
Birth and early career
He was born in London on 24 March 1806, probably at his parents’ house on the corner of Rathbone Place and Oxford Street. His father, William Moore, was a funeral undertaker whose more noteworthy engagements included the clandestine burial of Joanna Southcott.
He became a student at the Royal Academy and was reputedly also a pupil of Augustus Charles Pugin, under whose general direction he drew the interiors of Drury Lane Theatre and Westminster Hall, the western front of the Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen, and the nave of Saint-Ouen Abbey, Rouen, 1826–7. The influence of Pugin may be evident in Moore’s first exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1830 - a view of London’s Fish Street Hill, looking towards London Bridge, with detailed attention to the Monument and the spire of St Magnus the Martyr.
He had spent time in Italy by 1833, and in the following year the architectural sketches he made there attracted favourable attention when displayed, together with his interior view of Peterborough Cathedral, at the London Architectural Society’s first conversazione of the season at Exeter Hall. Little more than a month afterwards, however, his exhibition piece at the British Institution, depicting Venetians landing spoils of victory in front of the Doge’s Palace, was deplored by the Morning Post’s critic for the unrealistically “raw” colour of its sky.
Described as an “architectural painter”, he was admitted a member of the Artists’ Benevolent Fund in 1832, when one of his sponsors was Henry Sass, and his standing in artistic circles by 1835 is suggested by his signature to the widely published “Protest of Architects and Artists” objecting to the demolition of the fire-damaged St Stephen's Chapel (the other signatories being the already eminent William Etty, Henry Perronet Briggs, Daniel Maclise, Solomon Hart, Clarkson Stanfield, James Savage, Lewis Cottingham, Edward I'Anson, Richard Evans, George Smith, and the brothers George and Joseph Gwilt). Watercolours of what then remained of the chapel were painted by one “G. Moore” and these have, in recent times, been presented as the work of George Belton Moore; however, such attribution may be an example of what seems to be widespread crediting to him of work supposed but not known to be his (for which see further below).
Exhibition and reception of his work
Between 1830 and 1870 thirty-two of his works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, thirty-one at the British Institution, twenty-nine at the Society of British Artists’ gallery in Suffolk Street, and forty-nine at other London exhibition venues. He also exhibited in Glasgow and Dublin. Most frequently his exhibits at the Royal Academy and British Institution were urban landscapes or architectural studies, usually painted in Rome, Venice, Verona or Pavia. His work in England consisted mainly of images of ecclesiastical or fortified buildings, but occasionally he produced large landscapes such as Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lakes from Ashness, Cumberland (1839).
His architectural studies were sometimes presented in a scene from history or literature, but his figurework in such compositions tended to be dismissed as “stiff” and lacking in vigour. When exhibited, his work generally received measured commendation rather than energetic admiration – “pleasing”, “faithful”, “careful” and “imposing” being adjectives frequently employed in their appraisal. Those of his paintings which excited one critic were often dismissed by another.
He worked principally in watercolour heightened with bodycolour or gouache, and sometimes made preparatory sketches in coloured crayon. He discovered and advertised a method of setting or fixing crayon drawings so as to preserve them from damage when carried in portfolio. When, in 1845, he exhibited a work executed in oil, one reviewer observed “if it is his first attempt in oils it is to be hoped it will deter him from making a second”.