[1][2] Liverpool businessman John Moores, aside from his work with the Littlewoods retail and football betting company, was a keen amateur painter.

Out of frustration with the difficulty he had in finding an audience for his paintings, he financed an exhibition to which other artists in a similar situation could send their work, and compete to win prize money.

[3] Journalist Tim Hilton, who judged the prize in 1988, wrote in 1993 that the prizewinners generally "reflect the mood of the year".

[3][2] Early sixties prizes for Roger Hilton and Henry Mundy reflected the new decade's tendency towards colourful painting, moving on to minimal colour fields (Michael Tyzack, 1965 winner) and pop-style winners for David Hockney and Richard Hamilton in '67 and '69 respectively.

[2] A string of abstract artist winners between 1976 and 1982 (John Walker, Noel Forster, Mick Moon, John Hoyland) meant that, according to Hilton, the prize had become "predictable", and the winning painting would usually be "large, amply proportioned, handsome, almost over-serious and always painted by a man".

National Museums Liverpool also states that 1989 was the first time the prize was judged by a majority female jury.

[5] 2004's exhibition was described by Laura Gascoigne in The Spectator as being "dominated by three current trends: obsessive pattern-making, surreal 'bedroom' painting and cheerless realism".

Judge for the prize, Fiona Banner, said of the work: "It's [...] a painting of one artist reflected through another, a meeting of literary and pictorial minds".

[17] In 1993, Tim Hilton had already referred to Crowley as an "old lag" of the prize alongside Adrian Henri, calling the latter the "unofficial mayor of Liverpool" for his frequent inclusion in Moores exhibitions.