£375
Auction: Design Since 1860
oil on canvas
Provenance: From Castle of Park, Aberdeenshire
Exhibited: Campbell Wilson ‘Father and Daughter: Victor Hume Moody Catherine Olive Moody’ 2011, cat no.8
Note: Having initially established himself as a portraitist, Victor Hume Moody later enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London, and it was here, under the influence of William Rothenstein, that his career as an artist profoundly changed. Rothenstein encouraged him to focus on Classical themes and compositions, and Moody remained faithful to this throughout his career, using techniques from the Italian Renaissance as his source. His strong sense of form and a more sensual approach to figurative painting earned him critical acclaim and his works were widely exhibited across the UK. His fascination with the classical world had a lasting effect on his daughter Catherine, yet while her father tended to experiment with a variety of techniques such as tempera and gesso, Catherine’s works are predominantly executed in oil and pastel. She followed in her father’s footsteps later in life too, taking over his 27-year tenure as headmaster of the Malvern School of Art in 1962. Despite the growing popularity of Abstract and Conceptual art, she remained a passionate advocate of the arts and sought to keep the tradition of figurative painting alive, leaving a lasting legacy for the School and her students.