Alfred Elmore was a Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 history and genre painter. He was born in Cork

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, the son of Dr. John Richard Elmore, a surgeon who retired from the British Army to Clonakilty

Clonakilty

Clonakilty , often referred to by locals simply as Clon, is a small town on the N71 national secondary road in West County Cork, Ireland, approximately 45 minutes away by road to the west of Cork City. The town is on the southern coast of the island, and is surrounded by hilly country devoted...

.

His family moved to London, where Elmore studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. His early works were in the troubadour style

Troubadour style

Taking its name from medieval troubadours, the Troubadour Style was a French artistic movement across multiple media aiming to regain the idealised atmosphere of the Middle Ages...

 of Richard Parkes Bonington

Richard Parkes Bonington

Richard Parkes Bonington was an English Romantic landscape painter. One of the most influential British artists of his time, the facility of his style was inspired by the old masters, yet was entirely modern in its application.-Life and work:Richard Parkes Bonington was born in the town of Arnold,...

, but he soon graduated to religious work, notably The Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, commissioned by Daniel O'Connell

Daniel O'Connell

Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell (6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847; often referred to as The Liberator, or The Emancipator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century...

 for Westland Row Church in Dublin. Between 1840 and 1844 Elmore travelled across Europe, visiting Munich, Venice, Bologna, and Florence.

Elmore seems to have been associated with The Clique

The Clique

The Clique was a group of English artists formed by Richard Dadd in the late 1830s. Other members were Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O'Neil, John Phillip and Edward Matthew Ward....

, a group of young artists who saw themselves as followers of Hogarth

Hogarth

-People:* Burne Hogarth, American cartoonist, illustrator, educator and author* David George Hogarth, English archaeologist* Donald Hogarth, Canadian politician and mining financier* Paul Hogarth, English painter and illustrator...

 and David Wilkie

David Wilkie (artist)

Sir David Wilkie was a Scottish painter.- Early life :Wilkie was the son of the parish minister of Cults in Fife. He developed a love for art at an early age. In 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, Kettle and Cupar, his father reluctantly agreed to his becoming a painter...

. According to his friend William Powell Frith

William Powell Frith

William Powell Frith , was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1852...

 he was member of the group, but since it was most active while he was in continental Europe, his involvement was probably short-lived.

Most of Elmore's later works were historical narrative paintings. Religious Controversy and The Novice were implicitly anti-Catholic in character. Other paintings set episodes from Shakespeare, or the history of the French Revolution. They often contained subtle explorations of the process of creation, most importantly his two paintings about technological innovation, The Invention of the Stocking Loom

Stocking frame

A stocking frame was a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry. It was invented by William Lee of Calverton near Nottingham in 1589...

(1847, Nottingham Castle Museum) and The Invention of the Combing Machine

Wool combing machine

The wool combing machine was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1789 This machine is used to arrange and lay parallel by length the fibres of wool, prior to further treatment. The machine was important in the mechanisation of the textile industry. The machine was refined by many later inventors....

(1862, Cartwright Hall, Bradford). Both portray the process of industrialisation by depicting picturesque

Picturesque

Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...

 pre-industrial handicrafts. The inventor is supposed to be pondering these manual skills while he forms in his mind a mechanism to replace them.

Elmore's best-known work is On the Brink (1865; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), a moral genre painting depicting a young woman who has lost her money gambling, and is 'on the brink' of responding to the blandishments of a seducer, who is depicted as a satan-like figure, luridly bathed in red light, and whispering corrupting thoughts in her ear.

By the late 1860s Elmore was moving away from such Hogarthian subjects towards a more classical style influenced by Edward Poynter

Edward Poynter

Sir Edward John Poynter, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter, designer, and draughtsman who served as President of the Royal Academy.-Life:...

 and Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, OM, RA was a Dutch painter.Born in Dronrijp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there...

. He also painted Arabic figures, in line with the vogue for Orientalism

Orientalism

Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...

 in art.

Elmore suffered from neuralgia

Postherpetic neuralgia

Postherpetic neuralgia is a neuralgia caused by the varicella zoster virus. Typically, the neuralgia is confined to a dermatomic area of the skin and follows an outbreak of herpes zoster in that same dermatomic area...

through much of his life, and in his late years he became lame following a fall from his horse. He died of cancer in January 1881 and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery in London.

External links

• Alfred Elmore online (ArtCyclopedia)
• A. Elmore biography (Artist of the month, July 2009 - RA Collections, London)
• On the Brink at the Fitzwilliam Museum
• Alfred Elmore (Art Renewal Center)