Gerald Moira was born the son of a former Portuguese diplomat, who became a miniature painter, in London in 1867. In 1887 Moira entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the Armitage Prize for figure composition. A member of many professional artistic societies and Principal of Edinburgh College of Art from 1923-32, Moira was best known for his mural decorations in London, which included the Trocadero Restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue and the Central Criminal Court (1902–6).
Painter and teacher Gerald Moira was born in London, England, on 26 January 1867, the son of Eduardo Lobo da Moira, a former Portuguese diplomat who became a miniature painter. At the age of 18, he started to attend evening art classes and in 1887 he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools, where he was later awarded the Armitage Prize for figure composition. After a period in Paris, Moira returned to the Royal Academy, exhibiting for the first time in 1891. In 1898 he was commissioned by J. Lyons & Co. to decorate the Trocadero Restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue in central London, which made him well known to the general public. For the subject, he chose Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, executing four large panels. Thanks to the success of this work, Moira gained a reputation as a muralist, receiving numerous commissions, among them the decoration of the library and vestry of the Unitarian Church in Liverpool (1898) and the boardroom of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping in the City of London (1901).
Moira’s most important commission came soon afterwards when, thanks to a recommendation by fellow painter, George Frederick Watts, he was asked to decorate the newly constructed Central Criminal Court (1902–6), for which he produced three large lunettes and two stained glass windows, as well as paintings. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a portrait of Cardinal Manning, a study for part of the decoratve scheme. Moira's work for the Criminal Court included a depiction of Justice with her scales surrounded by various eminent persons; representations of Mosaic Law, with Moses and the Ten Commandments, and English Law, complete with King Alfred and the Druidic stones. Other commissions included a ceiling for the boardroom of Lloyd’s Register, and a frieze for the Passmore Edwards Free Library in Shoreditch, as well as works in private houses and church decorations.
In 1923 Moira held a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Beaux Art Gallery in Bruton Street. The Observer praised the decorative qualities of his work and his fresh sense of colour, adding that '[…] his is a talent that seems to shout for large spaces to fill with cunningly balanced designs – designs which never conforms to the clichés of academic composition, and yet never offend against the canons laid down by the schools' (The Observer 1923, p. 10). During the First World War he visited France and his art shifted towards more contemporary subjects, such as War Workers (Salford Museum and Art Gallery), depicting nurses acting as seamstresses and celebrating the contribution of women to the war effort. His 1916 A War Allegory for the ‘Hall of Heroes’ in the Arts and Crafts exhibition (organised by Henry Wilson at the Royal Academy) showed a combination of his new and former styles with a sober scene of a bedridden soldier, his family and nurse, all flanked by vast allegorical figures. His approach in A War Allegory, as well as in Triptych (1918) – directly based on observations made at a Canadian stationary hospital at Doullens in Picardy – was inspired by Italian masters of the Renaissance, and expressed a noble idealism rather than horror or destruction; during this time he also painted a serene family bathing group on the south coast, A July Day (1915, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), in a manner close to impressionism. Moira exhibited 41 times with the Royal Academy between 1891 and 1946 and was a frequent exhibitor with Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. In 1945 he was elected President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and, from 1923 until his retirement in 1932, he was Principal of Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. He was also, variously, Vice President of the Royal Watercolour Society, member of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) and founder member of the National Portrait Society. He was the first professor of Mural and Decorative Art at the Royal College of Art in London.
In later years, Moira continued to paint extensively in oils, tempera and watercolours, with subjects ranging from landscapes to figurative compositions and portraits. Gerald Moira died in Northwood, London, England on 2 August 1959. His obituary in The Times commented how he 'combined an excellent decorative feeling with an appropriate historical and allegorical sense' (The Times 1959, p. 11). Moira's work is represented in many UK collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and Brighton and Hove Museum and Art Gallery.
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Publications related to [Gerald Moira] in the Ben Uri Library