George Belton Moore

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.

[2] He became a student at the Royal Academy[3] 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.

[6] 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.

[12] 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).

[14] When exhibited, his work generally received measured commendation rather than energetic admiration – “pleasing”, “faithful”, “careful” and “imposing” being adjectives frequently employed in their appraisal.

[19] In 1840 the subjects of his daily lectures at the former were advertised as “Geometrical and Isometrical Projection including the Delineation of Shadows applicable to Architecture, Engineering and Machinery, Perspective, Landscape and Figures, illustrated by Outline or Form, Light, Shade and Colour”.

[22] The latter statement, echoed in Samuel Redgrave’s biographical notice of Moore,[23] receives no support from Frith’s own account of the picture’s production[24] but derives some credibility from the circumstance that The Athenaeum’s arts critic at the relevant time was the well-informed Frederic George Stephens.

[41] Knight’s Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy[42] also included drawings and lithographs by G. Moore, printed by the firm of Day & Haghe, with which that artist seems to have been closely associated.

His drawings and engravings on zinc form the end-plates to Alexis de Chateauneuf’s The Country House,[43] and there are numerous examples of his work, as printed by Day & Haghe, being attributed to George Belton Moore.