ABSTRACT
In a career devoted to the pursuit of ideal beauty, Albert Moore made use of repetition in a variety of forms, including the production of autograph replicas. The crucial role of repetition in Moore’s practice helps account for the uncharacteristic public stance he took against proposed revisions to copyright law in 1879. The aspect of the copyright debate that most directly affected Moore was the argument over who should hold copyright on an artwork after it was sold. Moore’s extensive preparatory work on the monumental nude in A Venus exemplifies the role of repetition as a spur to artistic development and counters the simplistic notion of replicas as merely repetitive or mechanical. In 1875, Moore experimented with another strategic use of replicas. Moore’s steady advance toward the perfection of formal beauty in his work owed a great deal to the art of repetition, especially as pursued through autograph replicas that were alternative versions or variations on a theme.
