Henry Moore 1898-1986

This exceptionally rare trial proof was Moore’s earliest experiment in lithography. When he agreed to make a print for Brenda Rawnsley’s ‘School Print’ project, the printers sent the artist two plates to draw on. A very small number of trial proofs of the two resulting images (CGM 6 and 8) were printed by Cowells and no edition was made. The subjects in this print are typical of Moore’s work at the time, exploring the seated figure, the family group and the mother and child theme. The texts adjacent to the images (in reverse) are Moore’s notes on the technical aspects of this new medium.

William Weston purchased print from a member of staff at WS Cowell Ltd, where the trial proofs had been printed.

Gérald Cramer (ed.) Alistair Grant & David Mitchinson, Henry Moore. The Graphic Work, 1931-72, vol. I, London, 1973, no.8, illustrated.

Printed in three colours: yellow, blue grey and black. ,

Collograph based on several drawings of 1948/49.

A few prints have been dated 1950.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s collography was a new printing technique. Collography is a printmaking ,process in which materials are applied to a rigid substrate (such as ,cardboard ,or ,wood). The word is derived from the ,Greek ,word ,koll ,or ,kolla, meaning glue, and ,graph, meaning the activity of ,drawing.

The plate once assembled can be intaglio-inked, inked with a roller or paintbrush or some combination of methods. Ink or pigment is applied to the collaged substrate ,and used to print onto paper ,using a printing press. (Collograph is sometimes spelt colograph or collagraph). Moore was at the forefront throughout his career of innovative printing techniques.

G. Cramer (ed.), Henry Moore: The Graphic Work 1931-1972, vol. I, Gerald Cramer, Geneva, 1973, no. 9 (ill. col.)

Using drawing as an investigative process, Moore seamlessly blended elements of the human form, shells, bones, and stones to cultivate fresh ideas for sculpture. Here, Moore’s play with interior space reflects his interest in found objects like holed flints (sometimes referred to as Hag stones) whilst also referencing his fascination with the ‘three-dimensional realisation’ of African sculpture. (1)

This print is based on the 1948 sketchbook ‘Standing Figures’ drawing and is numbered from the edition of 50.Based on a drawing Standing Figures 1948.

(1) Dawn Ades, ‘Henry Moore and World Sculpture’, in Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Tate Research Publication, 2015

Private collection, U.K.

G. Cramer (ed.), Henry Moore: The Graphic Work 1931-1972, vol. I, Gerald Cramer, Geneva, 1973, no. 9 (ill. col.)

Signed and numbered in pencil.

Ref: CGM/655

Raymond Spencer Company Ltd. for The Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham in association with Visconti, Vienna

Henry Moore: Catalogue of Graphic Work Volume IVI 1980-1986, published by Gerald Cramer, CGM/655

Unseen for decades, this is Moore’s first cast sculpture, depicting his sister Elizabeth Howarth’s new born daughter, Mary. It has remained in the Howarth family ever since.

Mr & Mrs Rowland Howarth, thence by descent
Private Collection, U.K.

David Sylvester (ed.) and Herbert Read, Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1921-48 vol. 1, London, 1990, no. 35, illustrated p. 7

David Mitchinson with intro. by Peter Osborne, Henry Moore, published by Osborne Samuel, 2015, p. 21

In 1978, Moore described how he was alerted by John Skeaping
to a stock of Cumberland alabaster, unearthed by a farmer ploughing his fields.
Moore then bought ‘eight or nine rough blocks’ from the farmer, had them sent to
London in parcels, and used the alabaster for a series of carvings in the early
1930s.[1]
Of these, Girl with Clasped Hands (1930) would be acquired by the
British Council, Four-Piece Composition: Reclining Figure (1934) by the
Tate, Bird and Egg (1934) by Yale Center for British Art: Paul Mellon
Collection, and Mother and Child (1931) and Carving (1935) by the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

Although Moore had begun to use the white, translucent form
of alabaster in the late 1920s, he came to prefer pale-grey or brown Cumberland
alabaster for its greater density and opacity, cutting it to fit his ideas
rather than preserving any of its natural form. His decision to stop using it
stemmed partly from people’s enthusiastic response ‘to the beauty of the
material, to the exclusion of an understanding of the works’ essential – i.e.
their sculptural – character’.[2]

Despite their somewhat different colourings, it seems probable
that Moore’s Head (1931) and Hepworth’s Figure (1933) derive from
the same source of Cumberland alabaster. Head, smaller and more
brown in tone, features incised lines to indicate features and a lateral
piercing to separate hair from its neck. From this side view, Head also evokes
a jug with a handle: a supremely tactile form. Its first owner was the Japanese
artist Shuzaburo Yasuda, who studied sculpture at the Tokyo National College of
Art and visited Moore’s Hampstead studio in 1936.

[1] Richard Morphet, ‘Henry Moore:
Four-Piece Composition 1934’, in The Tate Gallery 1976–8: Illustrated
Catalogue of Acquisitions, London, 1979, p.117.

[2]
ibid., pp. 119, 118.

The Artist

Shuzaburo Yasuda, Tokyo (acquired from artist, c. 1936)

Private Collection USA c. 1990

Berkeley Square Gallery, London

Private Collection UK, 2006 (purchased from the above)

A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, London,
1988, vol. 6, p.24, no. 105a (illustrated)

Henry Moore, Space and Form (exhibition catalogue), Osborne Samuel, London, 2021, p. 14

Henry Moore in Miniature, Holburne Museum, Bath,
curated by Chris Stephens, 3 May – 8 September
2024

This work is recorded in the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation research enquiry 2024.105 (cast by Gaskin)
Five of these sculptures were presented annually as awards by The British Film Academy between 1948 and 1967.

Henry Moore conceived this robustly proportioned Seated Figure in 1949 in response to a commission from the British Film Academy. From the bronze cast it received, the Film Academy—today the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)— had replicas made, which it presented each year (through 1967) to the production unit of award-winning films in five categories: Film from Any Source, British Film, United Nations Award, Short Film, and Specialized Film.

Seated Figure is a development of Moore’s seated mother in the Madonna and Child, which he had carved in Hornton stone in 1944 for the Church of St. Matthew in Northampton. This work also relates to the women in the Family Groups, several of which Moore enlarged from his small terracotta sketch-models and cast in bronze following the end of the Second World War. Here, the seated woman holds a sprig of laurel leaves in her left hand, symbolizing achievement and victory.

While Moore often gravitated toward the reclining figure for the greater freedom that this posture offered him, he appreciated the powerful stability and assurance of the seated form. Inspired by four Greek archaic seated marble figures in the British Museum (580-510 BCE), he extolled their “repose and monumentality. Look how poised yet relaxed that simple head is, it’s the very essence of a head on a neck and shoulders” (quoted in D. Finn, Henry Moore at the British Museum, New York, 1981, pp. 35 and 50). As if enthroned, his seated figures too become resplendently monumental.

Three drawings in particular, made by Moore during the late 1940s, evidence the artist’s bronze BAFTA commission: Seated Figure (c. 1948, HMF 2436), collection of the University of Toronto, Canada; Seated Woman (1948, HMF 2489), collection of The Moore Danowski Trust; Woman Knitting (1949, HMF 2525). The first two drawings are the most faithful, compositionally to the bronze, with the graceful, draped figure grasping the Romanesque seat with her right hand.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London (commissioned from the artist)
Jeffrey H. Loria & Co., New York
Private collection, New York (acquired from the above, March 2002)
Osborne Samuel, London

H. Read, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings since 1948, London, 1955, vol. II (another cast ill., pl. 3)
J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 176, no. 2 (another cast ill.)
I. Jianou, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 76, no. 255
R. Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, 1921-1969, London, 1970, p. 354, no. 392 (another cast ill., p. 186)
D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore: Sculpture, London, 1981, p. 311, no. 197 (another cast ill., p. 104)
A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1949-1954, London, 1986, vol. 2, p. 26, no. 271 (another cast ill., p. 27 and pl. 12)
J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: A Monumental Vision, London, 1998, p. 212, no. 258 (another cast ill., p. 213)

Dimensions include the artist’s base (2cm, 3/4 in high).

The recent, spectacular exhibition of Moore’s Helmet Heads at the Wallace Collection in 2019 demonstrates their enduring fascination. Moore had visited the Wallace Collection in the 1920s and made drawings of armour, recording details that found their way into his sculptures – most intensely during the 1930s to 1950s, but sporadically throughout the course of his life.

Early intimations of Moore’s Helmet series appear in his drawings in the mid-1930s. Helmets morph into heads, skulls contain blanched structures, branching within them. From these seedling ideas developed Moore’s first metal sculpture. The Helmet (1939–40), originally in lead, is a slender vertical structure. Two holes, piercing its top, appear as eyes. Most importantly, however, it encloses a separately cast inner form suggesting a figure, planted on two stubby legs. The upright form of this figure, in combination with the womb-like enclosure of the outer shell, suggests a mother and child.

Moore, in fact, cited multiple sources for the series that unfolded from this startling composition. In addition to the Wallace Collection, he recalled that his early interest in armour had been informed by the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he wandered at lunchtimes as a student. ₁ He also linked The Helmet’s origin to Percy Wyndham Lewis ‘talking about the shell of a lobster covering the soft flesh inside’. The carapace protects a vulnerable interior, just as a mother shields her child:

‘The helmet … became a recording of things inside other things. The mystery of semiobscurity where one can only half distinguish something. In the helmet you do not quite know what is inside.’ ₂

It is an intriguing line of thought, and one that Andrew Causey probed by juxtaposing Moore’s The Helmet with Epstein’s Rock Drill, which likewise shelters an embryo inside its mechanistic ribcage. ₃

Moore’s use of lead for the early versions of the Helmet series was a practical solution to casting his own work. Lead could be melted at a relatively low temperature, from sections of piping, and cast outdoors. Later, Moore cast these same sculptures in bronze to make them less vulnerable to damage. But again, there was an alternative reading. Moore described the original versions as ‘more expressive because lead has a kind of poisonous quality, you feel that if you licked it you might die’. ₄

Helmet (1950) is a maquette for the first numbered sculpture in the series. It has a more open, simplified form from the front, while the back has two pointed apertures and a series of slits, suggesting vents. Echoing this, the inner form is both pointed and curved, containing its own sharp slit. To the top are two circular holes. The catalogue for the Wallace Collection exhibition related the overall shape of this sculpture, with its prominent circular air vents, to the German ‘coalscuttle’ helmet – the M1916 Stahlhelm, which was a sought-after souvenir for British troops in World War I. Moore would have seen such helmets during combat in 1917. ₅

Yet, unlike the larger version of Helmet Head No. 1, the maquette is unique and possesses a distinct history. Cast in 1950, it was chosen in 1952 by Moore and Fritz Eriksson (Head of the Swedish Arts Council) as part of a touring exhibition destined for a year-long tour of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany. An installation photograph shows the two maquettes for Helmet Head No. I and Helmet Head No. 2, side by side on a plinth. To the left is Moore’s stone Composition (1932), subsequently bought by the Tate, and to the right, Half-Figure (1929) in cast concrete, purchased by the British Council in 1948. On the walls, enlarged photographs of further works by Moore indicate the breadth of his practice as a sculptor. Sold to its only owner, Ann Zwinger, in the early 1950s, the maquette for Helmet Head No. 1 was in fact a substitution for a different lead sculpture, which was damaged in transit. The maquette’s base touchingly records this provenance, bearing both the British Council’s exhibition label and the handwritten dedication ‘To Ann Zwinger, from Henry Moore’.

₁ Moore, in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), p. 214.
₂ Ibid.
₃ Andrew Causey, The Drawings of Henry Moore (Lund Humphries, 2010), p. 99.
₄ Moore, in Moore: Head-Helmet: An Exhibition to Celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Foundation of the University of Durham (Durham: DLI Museum and Arts Centre, 1982), p. 1
₅ Tobias Capwell & Hannah Higham, Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads (London: The Wallace Collection, 2019), p. 86.

The Artist

Ann H. Zwinger (purchased from the above)
By descent, Ann H. Zwinger Trust

LH2/278a

London, Leicester Galleries, New
Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, 1951

New York, Bucholz Gallery, Henry
Moor, 1951

Orebro, Sweden, 1952

The monogram of initials enclosed in a circle is similar to that Moore used on pottery he produced between 1917 and 1920

Mr & Mrs Rowland Howarth, Thence by descent

Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1916-29, vol.1, London, 1996, no. AG 19.1, illustrated p. 19

Mr & Mrs Rowland Howarth
Thence by descent

Provenance:

Elizabeth Howarth

Mary Shepherd

Private collection, UK

Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1916-29, vol. 1, London, 1996, no. AG 22.23, illustrated p. 53

c.1924

This drawing is from a group of life studies completed by the artist in the mid 1920s. It was gifted by Moore to his sister Elizabeth (Betty) Howarth.

Elizabeth Howarth
Private Collection UK

Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1916-29, vol. 1, London, 1996, no. AG 24.3, illustrated p. 85

This drawing and Eighteen Ideas for Sculpture AG39.20 originally formed part of a large sheet. Moore gave permission for the two sections to be separated in December 1983.

Around 1937, Moore became fascinated by Fabre de Lagrange’s mathematical models in the Science Museum: beautiful objects, made in 1872 from polished brass, wood and coloured filaments. Their aim was to demonstrate the new discipline of Descriptive Geometry, but for Moore it was the models’ structure and changing viewpoints that proved compelling – ‘the ability to look through the strings as with a bird cage and see one form within the other’. ₁

The precursors to these models, containing fixed elements, were devised by Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), whose pupil, Théodore Olivier (1793–1853), refined the concept by designing versions able to be distorted and rotated into a variety of configurations. It was these models, made by Lagrange, that changed the course of mathematical teaching. Forming the basis of teaching collections, they dictated the tenor of lectures, their delicate construction even requiring technicians to care for them.₂  ,Moore evidently studied Lagrange’s models carefully, commenting,

I was fascinated by the mathematical models … made to illustrate the difference of the form that is halfway between a square and a circle. One model had a square at one end with 20 holes along each side … Through these holes rings were threaded and lead [sic] to a circle with the same number of holes at the other end. A plane interposed through the middle shows the form that is halfway between a square and a circle ₃

Over a three-year period, between 1937 and 1939, Moore created around fifty sculptures in which space is modified by taut threads. There is a complex relationship between such works, Moore’s drawings and photography, as Andrew Causey has noted. A photograph, showing a cluster of stringed maquettes arranged on a plinth in Moore’s studio, corresponds exactly with the composition of Landscape with Figures (1938), in which Moore has supplied an imagined background. ₄ The implication is that Moore was exploring ideas beyond sculpture, and it is pertinent, as Causey also observes, that Moore’s drawings were included in the series of Penguin Modern Painters. ₅

In the two sets of drawings presented here, originally part of a single sheet, stringed figures predominate: proliferating and mutating serially across the paper, to suggest bones or stones, worn into strange cavities and curvatures. Fourteen Ideas for Sculpture relates most closely to the complexity of Lagrange’s conoid models, albeit exchanging their angularity for organic, rounded forms. In Eighteen Ideas for Sculpture the focus alters, to address – as Moore’s annotation makes clear – the ‘mother & child’. Moore made biomorphic stringed sculptures with this title, predominantly small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, in 1938–9. Also on this page are more familiar depictions of the subject, a mother standing, child in arms, as well as an abstract enclosing figure, similar to Moore’s internal/external forms. Most intriguing, and fitting into Causey’s category of the uncanny, are the two drawings to the lower left of the sheet, in which a bone-white structure is set closely against a quasi-human form. If the yellow of these figures isolates them, their darkly shaded background contributes to a sense of menace. Such ambiguity was captured by Robert Melville’s term ‘object-presences’: figures ready at any moment to ‘break into overt and destructive action’. ₆

₁ Moore, in Henry Moore and John Hedgecoe, Henry Spencer Moore (Thomas Nelson, 1968), p. 105.
₂ Jane Wess, ‘The history of surface mathematical models’, in Intersections: Henry Moore and Stringed Surfaces (London: The Royal Society, 2012), p. 7–8.
₃ Moore, in Moore and Hedgecoe, Henry Spencer Moore, p. 105.
₄ Andrew Causey, ‘Henry Moore and the Uncanny’, in Henry Moore: Critical Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), p. 82–90.
₅ Geoffrey Grigson, Henry Moore, The Penguin Modern Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Limited, 1943). Plate 20 shows a drawing, Objects – string and wood (1938), illustrating stringed figures in a prison-like setting.
₆ Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1921–1969 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 17.

Curt Valentin, New York
George Gallowhur, USA
Brigitta Bertoia, USA
Private Collection, Los Angeles
William Beadleston Gallery, New York
James Kirkman, London
New Art Centre, London
Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, New York
Osborne Samuel, London

H. Read, Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings, Lund Humphries, 1944, pl. 152a (ill.)
A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore Complete Drawings, Volume 2 (1930-39), Lund Humphries, London, 2001, no. AG39.19, HMF 1460

A. Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, Lund Humphries, London, 2002, p. 237 (ill.)

The Mayor Gallery, London
Christie’s, London, 4 December 1984, lot 285
Piccadilly Gallery, London
Private Collection, New York
Maxwell Davidson, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above 1998)

Osborne Samuel, London

A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings Volume 3 (1940-49), Lund Humphries, London, 2001, AG 40.40, HMF 1512a, p. 31 (ill. b&w)

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Henry Moore: Drawings, Watercolours and Gouaches, 1970, no. 88

As its title implies this working, energetic sheet is a graphic rehearsal or blueprint for possible sculptures and contains both reclining, seated and figures with internal forms, themes which were to dominate Moore’ s career. Elements hark back to the surrealist tendencies from the late 1930’ s but also formal sculptural resolutions have evolved on the sheet and are familiar in works from the 1940’ s onwards. The energetic application of layers of mixed media echoes the bony, taut surfaces of the sculptures. The memorable drawing ’ Crowd looking at a tied-up object (1942) recalls Yves Tanguy’ s ocean-bed surrealism. Ideas for Sculpture , though a set of un-related studies rather than an independent or cohesive narrative, contains a similarly elusive feeling of mystery and atmospheric flux.

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York (by 1955)
Erna Futter, New York, Estate sale, Christie’s, New York, 1986
Private Collection, USA (acquired from the above)
Osborne Samuel, London

H. Read, Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings, Lund Humphries, 1944, ill. p. xxxii

A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, Volume 3: (1940-49), Lund Humphries, London, 2001, p. 156, no. AG 42.148 (ill.)

This drawing is reminiscent of a work from the same period Reclining Figures: Ideas for Stone Sculpture, 1944, in which each figure appears in an individual pod in a subterranean setting, recalling the mysterious fascination that caves in hillsides and cliffs held for the artist. Moore’s interest in underground landscapes had previously been expressed in his ‘Shelter Drawings’ series of 1941, depicting figures taking refuge in the London Underground during the Blitz, and in his coal mining drawings of the same year.

Private Collection, Chicago (acquired before 1950 & thence by descent)

Private Collection, USA

A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, Volume 3: 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no. AG43.107, HMF 2156, p. 196 (ill.)

Stanford University, Cantor Centre for Visual Arts, March 2000

On 23 July 1943, the Reverend Walter Hussey, Sir Kenneth Clark and Sir Jasper Ridley (1887–1951) visited Moore’s studio to see five maquettes for a Madonna and Child commissioned by Hussey for his parish church of St Matthew’s, Northampton. Hussey had approached Moore after seeing his Shelter Drawings in an exhibition at the National Gallery in autumn 1942. As a result, between April and June 1943, Moore compiled his ‘Mother and Child Sketchbook’, from which he modelled twelve different maquettes in clay. The example chosen by Hussey, from the five maquettes Moore presented, was enlarged and carved from Hornton stone, to be installed in early 1944.

Ridley, through his close involvement with the work’s genesis and execution, decided to commission a Madonna and Child from a different maquette, partly as a war memorial for his parish church in Claydon, Suffolk, but also to commemorate his own son, Jasper Ridley (1913–43), who had died in the war. This sketch, in pencil, ink, wax resist and wash, closely reflects the design of the Madonna and Child (1948–9) for Claydon, except in one detail: Moore, who apparently felt that the carving lacked sufficient majesty, added a crown, which he built up over several days using ground stone and fixative.

Asked in 1952 to provide a design to be reproduced on Christmas stamps, as part of a publicity campaign for the newly founded National Fund for Poliomyelitis Research (now Action Medical Research), Moore gave this drawing to the charity’s founder, Duncan Guthrie. The image of a mother and child would hold particular significance for Guthrie, whose young daughter, Janet, was diagnosed with polio in 1949.

The Artist
By whom gifted to Duncan Guthrie, 1952
Private Collection, U.K.
Osborne Samuel, London

This is recorded with the Henry Moore Foundation as HMF 2186b

From the Rescue Sketchbook, page 21. The early part of this sketchbook contains various studies for textile designs and family groups which may date to 1943. The latter part to preliminary sketches for The Rescue, a melodrama by Edward Sackville-West published in 1945 including reproductions of Moore’s drawings.

Private Collection, UK, 1954
James Kirkman, London
Piccadilly Gallery, London

Osborne Samuel, London

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG44.20, HMF 2241a, p.214-215

Pencil, wax crayon, watercolour wash, pen and ink.

Signed lower right

Pages 39 and 40 from the `Rescue Sketchbook’

(Reference: HMF 2289c)
https://catalogue.henry-moore.org/objects/24322/odysseus-in-the-naiads-cave?ctx=d6875ac809f7849137bce53c522a84bdf7b0d62c&idx=1

From the collection of Lord Clark, O.M.
Thence by descent 
Osborne Samuel, London
Private Collection, UK

The doyen of the art establishment in twentieth-century Britain, Sir Kenneth Clark first met Henry Moore in 1938, beginning what would become a longstanding and mutually respectful professional relationship. Having been appointed as surveyor of the King’s Pictures by 1934, Clark had then served as director, firstly of the Ashmolean Museum and subsequently the National Gallery, and through the brilliance of his academic and institutional career he justly earned a position of significant aesthetic influence. His appreciation and avid endorsement of Moore’s work played a critical part in the success and worldwide renown that the artist was to enjoy in the decades that followed

In 1948 Mother Preparing Child for Bath was acquired by Clark directly from the artist, who had executed it shortly after the end of World War II. Moore had famously made a number of powerfully moving drawings of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in underground stations during the war. These were works which, through their honest and compassionate depictions of vulnerability and confinement, did so much to champion the quiet courage of ordinary people stoically withstanding the ravages of the bombing. As Chair of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, Clark recognised their propagandic value. More importantly, however, he saw in them something more universal: an expression of humanity which emphasised its nobility and which accentuated the archetypal bonds of intimacy. These were themes which preoccupied the artist for the rest of his career.

‘The Mother and Child is a theme that’s been universal from the beginning of time. Some of the very earliest sculptures we have are from Neolithic times, are mothers and children. It’s a subject, just like talking about human figure or the female figure. Mother and child theme is just something universal.’ – Henry Moore

The figure of mother and child, that most enduring of art historical motifs, was also to become one of Moore’s most frequently recurring subjects, featuring in his drawings and sculptures alike, right up until the final years of his life. In the present work the theme is endowed with Moore’s characteristically modernist treatment, as manifested by his treatment of the mother’s head and the relative monumentality of her torso and limbs, carefully given volume through the use of sculptural lines. The stark emptiness of the room and the off-centre positioning of the figures speaks to a sense of social separation and austerity. And yet these anxieties cannot weaken the unbreakable maternal attachment and the primordial urge of a mother to provide tender care to her child. This is all the more poignant given the birth of Moore’s only child Mary the very same year.

Having remained in Clark’s personal collection for many years, and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1948, where Moore was awarded the International Sculpture Prize, this work enjoys an exceptional provenance. But its emblematic subject matter also distinguishes it as a remarkable example of Moore’s ability to articulate a pure and unembellished conception of dependence.

Acquired directly from the artist by Sir Kenneth Clark, by 1948
Galerie Maeght, New York
Rothschild Fine Arts, New York
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 17 May 1984, lot 171
Private collection, California, by whom acquired at the above sale
Waddington Galleries, London
Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above 2016)
Osborne Samuel, London

R. Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1969, London, 1970, p. 352, pl. 328, as ‘Woman and Child with Bath’
K. Clark, Henry Moore: Drawings, London, 1974, p. 324, no. 223, ill. as ‘Mother and Child in Setting’
A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Drawings 1940-49, Vol. 3, Much Hadham, 2001, pp. 244-245, no. AG 46.43, HMF 2272, ill.

London, Leicester Galleries, New Sculpture and Drawings by Henry Moore, October 1946, p. 14, no. 52, as ‘Mother and child in a room’
Venice, XXIV Biennale di Venezia, May – September 1948, no. 62, as ‘Madre con bambino’
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Thirty Contemporary Paintings, 1954, no. 19
London, Lefevre Gallery, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, November – December 1972, pp. 100-101, no. 49, ill.

Redfern Gallery, London
Mrs Ian Farquhar
Sotheby’s, London, 20 June 1962, lot 168
Marlborough Fine Art, London
Roger and Josette Vanthournout, Belgium, acquired from the above
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel, London

H. Read (intro.), Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, Vol. 1, New York, 1949, pl. 244b
D. Sylvester (ed.), Henry Moore: Sculptures and Drawings 1921-1948, Vol. 1, London, 1957, p. 265, ill.
R. Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1969, London, 1970, p. 354, pl. 379
A. Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Drawings 1940-49, Vol. 3, Much Hadham, 2001, p. 283, no. AG 48.23, HMF 2495, ill.

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Watercolours and Drawings by Oskar Kokoschka, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, September – October 1962, no. 50

Rear end paper from the Red Notebook, containing drawings made between 1969-1977, some of which are studies of the artist’s daughter Mary.

The artist’s daughter

A. Bowness, Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1950-76, vol. 4, Lund Humphries, London, 1977, p. 207, no. AG 69-77.58, HMF 3227 (ill. b&w)