Gerald Moira

Gerald Moira was the son of a former Portuguese diplomat, who was also a painter, specialising in miniaturist portraits. In 1887 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts where he received the Armitage Prize for figure composition in his first year. Moira became best known for his murals and first exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1891. He was commissioned by J. Lyons and Co. in 1896 to paint a mural in the entrance hall of the famous Trocadero restaurant in Shaftsbury Avenue in London, a centre for fashionable revelry. Other noted murals from his early work include commissions to paint the library and vestry ceilings of the Unitarian Chapel in Liverpool, the board-room of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping and the Central Criminal Court in London. Moira was principal of the Edinburgh College of Art from 1923 until 1932, president of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, vice-president of the Royal Watercolour Society, a member of the Royal West of England Academy, and a founder member of the National Portrait Society.

Ruth Keating