Alfred Elmore

Alfred Elmore painted history, religion and modern life as moral stories, with rich colour and careful staging. His best known picture, On the Brink (1865), shows a young woman outside a gambling hall at night after losing her money, and is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

He was born in Clonakilty, Ireland, in 1815, studied at the Royal Academy Schools and travelled in Europe from 1840 to 1844. He was associated with The Clique, the group of young painters around Richard Dadd and Augustus Egg, and became a Royal Academician in 1857. He also painted scenes of industrial invention, such as The Invention of the Stocking Loom. He died in London in 1881.

The Invention of the Combing Machine shows his interest in modern industry as a subject.