Henry Moore 1898-1986

Deluxe edition contains 2 original prints signed and numbered by the artist, the first etchings CGM `Composition for a Poem by Herbert Read’, 1946 (34.9 x 27.6 cm) and the last lithograph illustrated here, CGM 719, `Two Seated Women on Beach’ from 1984 (31.4 x 46.4 cm)

Deluxe edition contains 2 original prints signed and numbered by the artist, the first etchings CGM `Composition for a Poem by Herbert Read’, 1946 (34.9 x 27.6 cm) and the last lithograph illustrated here, CGM 719, `Two Seated Women on Beach’ from 1984 (31.4 x 46.4 cm)

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

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

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

Irina Moore

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 2, page 164, number AG 35.91, HMF1180

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
Private Collection, USA
Osborne Samuel, London

Herbert Read, Moore (Vol.1), 1944, pl152a; 1949, pl.152a
Henry Moore Complete Drawings; Vo lume 2 (1930-39) , edited by Ann Garrould, published by Lund Humphries, no. AG39.20; HMF 1383

This drawing and Fourteen Ideas for Sculpture AG39.19 originally formed part of a large sheet. Moore gave permission for the two sections to be separated in December 1983. Moore signed this drawing when it was separated in 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

Herbert Read, Moore (Vol.1), 1944, pl152a; 1949, pl.152a
Henry Moore Complete Drawings; Volume 2 (1930-39) , edited by Ann Garrould, published by Lund Humphries, no. AG39.19; HMF 1460
Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), illustrated p. 237.

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.

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York (by 1955).
Erna Futter, New York; Estate sale, Christie’s, New York, 15 May 1986, lot 181.
Acquired at the above sale by the late owner
Osborne Samuel, London

Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings , with an introduction by Herbert Read, published by Lund Humphries, first published 1944, illustrated p. xxxii

A. Garrould, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1940-49 , London, 2001, vol. 3, p. 156, no. AG 42.148 (illustrated p.156).

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.

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

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG43.107; HMF 2156, ills.p.196

Stanford, Iris & B Gerald Cantor Centre for Visual Arts, Stanford University, on loan, March 2000

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 c aves 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

The Artist
By whom gifted to Duncan Guthrie, 1952
Private Collection, UK

This drawing is one of the preparatory studies for the Madonna and Child sculpture in St Matthews Church, Northampton which Moore executed in 1944. This particular version was also modelled by the artist in terracotta and subsequently cast in bronze.

Duncan Guthrie was the founder of the National Fund for Research into Poliomyelitis & Other Crippling Diseases, a charitable organisation now known as Action Medical Research. Following the charity’s foundation in 1952, Guthrie inaugurated a series of Christmas seals as a fundraiser and invited Henry Moore to provide a design, which forms the present work.

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

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 3, p. 214, AG 44.20, HMF 2241a

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.

Gifted by the artist to his nephew as a wedding present (Albert Spencer Speight)
Thence by descent

The Henry Moore Foundation has suggested a date of 1948 for the drawing and that it originally was part of the 1947-49 sketchbook

The Leicester Galleries, London, where purchased by Sir Eric Maclagan, May 1951
Thence by family descent
Osborne Samuel, London

The Leicester Galleries, London, New Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore , 1951, cat.no.41

In 1927, Moore made a series of studies of his mother in which he captured the cast and tilt of her head improvisatorially in ink on newspaper. Fourteen years later, often from memory, he undertook to record the conditions in London’ s underground shelters. These drawings are quite different in character. By apparently transforming the figures to effigies, frozen in collective indignity, Moore appeared to shy away from subjective expression, creating instead ‘ a cast characters … who are drawn from reality but are also generic people who suffer and endure’ .1

Three Female Figures stems from the shelter drawings, in technique and approach, but also provides insight into other areas of Moore’ s working practice. It is, in effect, a tableau depicting an elderly woman, hunch-shouldered, feet planted heavily, ministered by two younger women. The postures are statuesque, the gestures petrified acts of humanity, but Moore’ s realisation is graphic as well as sculptural. Using a technique he described as ‘ sectional drawing’ , Moore divides the surface of the figures into jigsaw grids to create a sense of volume. Equally, he uses wax crayon and wash to create spontaneous effects of light, offsetting and animating the composition.

Three Female Figures , in fact, relates to Moore’ s early experiments in printmaking. In 1949 Moore had begun a collaboration with the Ganymed Press, newly founded in London using equipment from its former namesake in Berlin. Ganymed’ s speciality at this period was ‘ collograph’ , so-called by the press’ s manager, Bernhard Baer, to distinguish from conventional collotypes, which were reproductive rather than autographic. Essentially, the artist would draw in separation on plastic sheets (Kodatrace) to create images transferred photographically to a light-sensitised glass plate. Among Moore’ s first prints using this technique was a scarcely modified version of Three Female Figures ( c. 1950), for which only eleven proofs are known to exist.2

1. Andrew Causey, The Drawings of Henry Moore (Lund Humphries, 2010), p. 13.

2. Three Female Figures , CGM 16, collograph, 50.5 x 38.1 cm, printed in black, blue-grey and yellow. See Frances Carey and Anthony Griffiths, Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960 (British Museum Publications, 1990), p. 150-52; David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Prints and Portfolios , (Patrick Cramer, 2010), p. 28, 32 (illustrated in colour). The existence of the drawing was not known at the time of Mitchinson’ s study.

Fischer Fine Art, London

A,Garrould, Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1940-1949, Vol.3, Much Hadham, 2001, p. 276, no. AG 47-49.79; HMF 2468

D. Mitchinson, Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios, Geneva 2010

Verso: ‘Study for Family Group’

Coloured crayon, wax crayon, watercolour wash

The sketch on verso is used in the 1949 collograph CGM 5

Galerie Gérald Cramer, Geneva
Sotheby’s, London, December 16, 1964, lot 169
Brook Street Gallery, London
Private collection, USA

John Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision: The Sculpture of Henry Moore, London, 1998, p. 110
Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1950-76, vol. 4, London, 2003, no. AG 61-62.40, illustrated p. 163

Geneva, Galerie Gérald Cramer, Henry Moore: Sculptures, Dessins, Estampes, 1962-63, no. 41

From Sketchbook 3, Page 34A

The artist’s daughter

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 4, page 207, number HMF3227; AG69-77.58

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

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 2, page 270, number AG72-74.37, HMF 73/74 (77)

From The Red Notebook, p.68 verso

From Sketchbook 4, Page 44

Verso: Seated Mother and Child. Charcoal, chinagraph. Signed in biro. From Sketchbook 2, p. 30.

From Sketchbook 1, Page 8

Reference: HMF75.77; AG75.8

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 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.

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.

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.

Private Collection, UK

Gérald Cramer (ed.) Alistair Grant & David Mitchinson, Henry Moore. The Graphic Work, 1931-72, vol. I, London, 1973, no.14, illustrated.

Based on a drawing Standing Figures 1948.

From the album `Meditations on the Effigy’

From the album `Meditations on the Effigy’

From the Auden Poems Portfolio. 

From the `Reclining Figures’ Portfolio, a set of 6 lithographs. 

From the Auden Poems Portfolio.

From the Auden Poems Portfolio.

From the `Reclining Figures’ Portfolio, a set of 6 lithographs. A rare impression.

From the Auden Poems Portfolio.

From the `Reclining Figures’ Portfolio, a set of 6 lithographs. 

From the ‘Reclining Figure’ Portfolio (Deluxe Edition)

Private Collection, UK

Henry Moore and the Challenge of Architecture , published by the Henry Moore Foundation, 2005, catalogue no.3, page 6

Henry Moore Foundation, Henry Moore and the Challenge of Artchitecture, Perry Green Much Hadham, 2005

One of only 3 recorded impressions.

Dancing Figures is a rare and early linocut from 1921, which came to light among other previously unseen works in the exhibition Henry Moore and The Challenge of Architecture, organised by the Henry Moore Foundation in 2005.

This linocut was created as an idea for an architectural frieze and conveys a sense of movement and dynamism among the stylized figures, giving a clear insight into Moore’s creative process at a time when he started his earliest explorations of architectural concepts.

Mr & Mrs Rowland Howarth
Thence by descent

This unique sculpture is of the head of Elizabeth Howarth’s son Peter.

The Leicester Galleries, London
Malcolm MacTaggart, Esq., Welwyn
Sotheby’s, London 01/07/1987. Lot 307
Private collection USA
Private collection UK

Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawing, Lund Humphries, 1944, No. 87 (pl.54)
Terence Mullaly, ‘Collectors Pieces’ in the Daily Telegraph, Oct 13th 1961 illustr.
Ionel Jianou ‘Henry Moore’ Paris 1968, p.67, no.75, catalogued
D. Sylvester (ed.)

Leicester Galleries, London, 1931 ‘Exhibition of Sculpture & Drawings by Henry Moore, 1931. No.4
Marlborough Fine Art, Henry Moore: Stone & Wood Carvings (loan exhibition in aid of the RAF Benevolent Fund), 1961, no.31, illustrated.

Edgar B. Young & Jane White Young, New York (acquired from the artist on November 26, 1965)
Private Collection, USA (acquired from the above in 2002)
Osborne Samuel, London

David Sylvester, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, vol. 1 , London, no. 231, illustration of the terracotta version p. 146
David Mitchinson et al., Celebrating Moore, Works from the Collection of The Henry Moore Foundation , London, 1998, no.143, illustration of another cast p.209
John Hedgecoe, Monumental Vision: The Sculpture of Henry Moore , London, 1998, no.234, illustration of the terracotta version, p.211
Dorothy Kosinski, Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20th Century (New Haven & London: Dallas Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2001), cat. 50, illustrated in terracotta, p. 174.

Casts held at the San Diego Museum of Art & the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, USAThe terracotta original is held by the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, UK

A group of a dozen or more maquettes owes its origin to an unrealised commission for Impington Village College, in Cambridgeshire. When the educationalist Henry Morris approached Moore, in the 1930s, it was with an inspirational vision to create a centre for the surrounding villages, designed by the architect Walter Gropius, to integrate art, music, lectures, plays and films into everyday life. Moore instantly lighted upon the subject of the family, as most appropriate. Although funds proved insufficient to fulfil the project at the time, the idea took root.

In 1944, Morris again contacted Moore, who began to make sketches, then maquettes of family groups. Some were intended to be enlarged as bronze sculptures, but most were envisaged as stone carvings, Moore’s preferred medium for Impington. After nine months’ work, however, the project foundered, partly through lack of money, and partly due to the Education Authority’s lack of enthusiasm for Moore’s maquettes. Some years later, the ideas were developed as two significant commissions: Family Group (1948-9), in bronze for Barclay School in Stevenage, and Family Group (1954-5), in stone for Harlow New Town. ₁

Contemplating the Impington commission, Moore filled two sketchbooks with family groups. The compositions varied between one- and two-children families, with the children (of different ages) seated or standing. Some are more abstract than others, some figures contain holes, others have vestigial or split heads. The female figure is often swathed in a shawl or dress, and sometimes a blanket is draped, tenderly, over both figures’ knees. Moore regarded these sketches not only as generating ideas for sculpture but as a means of clarifying the subject in his mind: with a battery of possibilities before him, he could choose which to refine and take forward. In conversation with David Sylvester, Moore later identified the family group as his last significant subject to be developed through this process of drawing. ₂

The maquette for Family Group (1944) shows three seated figures. To the left, a woman holds a child, to the right, a man places one hand protectively on the woman’s shoulder, while his other hand holds a book. The message is clear: that a close family unit is inseparable from the values of education. Significantly, Morris had intended to bring all aspects of learning together at Impington, with parents and children using the same building, and ‘village’ and ‘college’ functioning, effectively, as families.₃ Morris’s thinking can be set against the backdrop of the Welfare State, with its focus on upholding and supporting the family as a vital anchor for society.

Having made a similar group of maquettes for the Northampton Madonna and Child, in 1943, Moore realised their potential, once editioned in bronze, for use as promotion or a source of income.₄ Family Group was editioned in 1956, from the original terracotta maquette, by Charles Gaskin of the Art Bronze Foundry in Chelsea. Bernard Meadows, who was Moore’s assistant at the time, recalled that some casts were roughly finished, and required considerable refinement before returning to the foundry for patination. The flipside to this, paradoxically, is that their final state can be considered to have been closely supervised and worked on by the artist.

Kenneth Clark remained critical of Moore’s family groups, considering them to lack the force, or menace, of other subjects. The phrase Clark used was ‘dutiful deadness’, which he diagnosed as stemming from Moore’s own personal happiness, as represented by the family – a wife and child.₅ Notwithstanding, Family Group (1944) is a beautifully conceived and realised maquette, possessing the quiet strength of its monumental counterparts. Moore’s commissions for Stevenage and Harlow, meanwhile, would become well-loved examples of public art.

₁ See Moore, in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), p. 89, 273-5.
₂ Henry Moore in ‘Henry Moore Talking to David Sylvester’ (7 June 1963), BBC Third Programme. See also Alice Correia, ‘Maquette for Family Group 1945 by Henry Moore OM, CH’, Tate Research Publications (2014).
₃ Andrew Causey, The Drawings of Henry Moore (Lund Humphries, 2010), p. 133.
₄ David Sylvester, ‘The Evolution of Henry Moore’s Sculpture: II’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 90, No. 544 (July 1948), p. 190.
₅ Kenneth Clark, Henry Moore Drawings (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), p. 155.

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Riklis Collection, New York
Weintraub Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Berkeley Square Gallery, London

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1921-48, vol. 1, London, 1957, no. 261, illustration of another cast
Franco Russoli and David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Sculpture, London, 1981, no. 182, p.96, illustration of another cast
80th Birthday

Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
San Francisco, California, USA, Henry Moore: The Reclining Figure, 1984, No. 26, (another cast)
Austin, Texas, USA
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Portland, Oregon, USA
Waddington Galleries, London, 1992, No.14, (another cast)

In modelling Reclining Figure Henry Moore has encapsulated many of the most important motifs of his definitive aesthetic style. The curvaceous form of the sculpture recalls the blanketed sleeping figures Moore captured beneath the city of London in the Underground during the war and the sensuous lines of the model belie the complex arrangement of internal and external shapes. The key elements of his post-war abstraction can be discerned in the present work, particularily the use of striated surfaces and an extreme plasticity of form. The subject of the reclining figure is synonymous with Moore and was the most important motif of his œuvre, as he explained, ‘The reclining figure gives the most freedom… A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same time. It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity. Also it has repose’ (quoted in A. Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 218).

The present work was conceived in 1946, a momentous year for Moore, foremost the birth of his daughter Mary who was the first owner of Reclining Figure; also his first great American retrospective was presented in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. It was also during the mid-1940s that he made crucial technical developments; he began to thoroughly explore the distinct qualities of bronze. The freedom gained from that malleable material meant that his sculptures assumed more spatially dynamic forms exemplified by the voided drum of the torso in the present work. Herbert Read suggests that ‘the ideas could now be rendered without physical compromise into a ductile material’ (H. Read, Henry Moore, London, 1965, p. 169).

Galerie Uterman, Dortmund
Private Collection,1993 (acquired from the above)
Sotheby’ s London. 2005 (consigned from the above)
Private Collection, London

Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, no. 56, n.p. (another example illustrated)
Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture 1949-54, vol. 2, London, 1965, no. 328, pp. 42-43 (another example illustrated, p. 42)

Orange, Chapman College, Henry Moore, January 31 – February 14, 1964
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Henry Moore in Southern California, October 2 – November 18, 1973, no. 37

Private Collection, UK
Marina & Willy Staehelin-Peyer Collection, USA
Acquired directly from the artist

Alan Bowness, ed.’ Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, 1955-64, Vol.3, London, 1965, no:412, ill. of another example p.30. pls 38 & 39

Edition of 11

In a letter to Dr. Staehelin, Moore describes the casting of his recently finished piece, ‘Draped Reclining Woman’.‘ I am going to have it cast in Berlin, as I have been given the name of a very good bronze foundary which can cast it without delay … Of course I shall have to go to Berlin myself to see the cast as it gets near completion, so that I am sure that it is well done and entirely satisfactory’ (Henry Moore, unpublished letter to Dr. Staehelin, December 5, 1958)

Henry Moore Archive: Drapery played a very important part in the shelter drawings I made in 1940 and 1941 and what I began to learn then about its function as form gave me the intention, sometime or other, to use drapery in sculpture in a more realistic way than I had ever tried to use it in my carved sculpture. And my first visit to Greece in 1951 perhaps helped to strengthen this intention . . . Drapery can emphasise the tension in a figure, for where the form pushes outwards, such as on the shoulders, the thighs, the breasts, etc., it can be pulled tight across the form (almost like a bandage), and by contrast with the crumpled slackness of the drapery which lies between the salient points, the pressure from inside is intensified . . . Drapery can also, by its direction over the form, make more obvious the section, that is, show shape. It need not be just a decorative addition, but can serve to stress the sculptural idea of the figure.

Henry Moore quoted from Sculpture in the Open Air: A Talk by Henry Moore on his Sculpture and its Placing in Open-Air Sites, edited by Robert Melville and recorded by the British Council 1955; typescript, copy in HMF library

Acquired directly from the artist
Private collection, Maryland
By descent

A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture 1955-1964, Vol. 3, London, 2005, no. 473, p. 46 (another cast illustrated p. 47).

Private Collection, UK

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1981-86, vol. 6, London, 1988, no. 539b, illustration of another cast, p.28 and pls.7-10
Claude Allemand-Cosneau, Manfred Fath and David Mitchinson (eds), Henry Moore: From the Inside Out, Plasters, Carvings and Drawings , New York, 1966

India (with British Council), 1987, No. 4
Contemporary Sculpture Centre, Japan, 1998, No. 9
James Goodman Gallery, New York, 1998, No. 10

Moore developed a series of thin standing figures in the mid 1960s including the present work, two juxtaposed standing figures. The 1965 maquette was modelled in clay around two match sticks fixed into a piece of cork, cast in 1969 and subsequently enlarged in 1984.

Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan
Private Collection (Acquired from the above c.2003)
Osborne Samuel, London

A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Sculpture and drawings, vol. 5, Sculpture 1974-1980, London, 1983, no. 656, p. 20 & p. 21
Henry Moore: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, Grafiken (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Ruf, Munich, 1983-84, no. 64, illustration of another cast n.p.
John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: A Monumental Vision, Cologne, 2005, no. 570, illustration of another cast p. 237
Henry Moore Back to a Land (exhibition catalogue), Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, 2015, n.n., illustration in colour of another cast p. 126

This work is recorded in the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation under number 2019.4

Moore had always wanted to make a figure in wood with ‘a bend in its pose’. His preference was for elm, and prior to the catastrophic arrival of elm disease he carved four over-lifesize sculptures. In 1975 he acquired a large elm tree, recently felled, and immediately began to carve the unseasoned wood. The process demanded particular attention, as Moore understood. Once finished, however, he regarded Reclining Figure: Holes (1976–78) as ‘having something special and different from the others’.1 

The carving was documented, from start to finish, by the photographer Gemma Levine, and published as a photo-essay with comments by Moore.2 In several images the plaster maquette can be seen as a tiny sculptural presence on top of the elmwood block, its softly modelled surfaces contrasting with the roughly chiselled planes of the figure, as it developed amid the studio detritus of tools, rulers, wedges and woodchips.

Cast in bronze, in 1975, Maquette for Reclining Figure: Holes is a tactile, enigmatic form. From the front it rests languorously, space entering the composition through voids where limbs arch and touch. Reversed, the salient feature is the curve Moore anticipated so keenly. These two facets are complementary yet unexpected. The opening-up of the figure might be regarded as purely practical (when translated into unseasoned wood, it encouraged even drying), yet it is also integral to the work’s aesthetic – which unfolds as a lucidly structured, organic form.

1. Moore (1983), in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), p. 305.
2. Henry Moore and Gemma Levine, Henry Moore: Wood Sculpture (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1983). Some of the images were included in With Henry Moore: The Artist at Work, photographed by Gemma Levine (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978), p. 94–108.

The artist
Weintraub Gallery, New York
Jeffrey Loria, New York
Private collection, California

A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1974-80 , London, 1994, vol. V, no. 698 (illustrated)

2000-01 Bejing/Guangzhou/Shanghai, Moore in China (cast 0/8)

Edition of 9

A cast of this bronze is held at Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Fukushima, Japan. Another is held by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

The original plaster and a bronze cast is held at the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, UK

Notes: ‘The ‘Mother and Child’ idea is one of my two or three obsessions, one of my inexhaustible subjects. This may have something to do with the fact that the ‘Madonna and Child’ was so important in the art of the past and that one loves the old masters and has learned so much from them… But the subject itself is eternal and unending, with so many sculptural possibilities in it – a small form in relation to a big form protecting the small one, and so on. It is such a rich subject, both humanly and compositionally, that I will always go on using it.’ Henry Moore quoted in Henry Moore Drawings 1969-79 , Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, 1979, p.29. Henry Moore’s obsession with the Mother and Child theme was rooted in his desire to step beyond the overt meaning of the composition to engage with broader and more innovative sculptural possibilities. The repetition of such a common trope frees it of its overt meaning allowing the sculptor, as Moore himself noted, ‘to invent a completely new form idea.’ (Henry Moore, quoted in J. Russell, Henry Moore , London, 1968, p. 28).

By this repeated engagement with the theme each new iteration brought new discoveries, building to an extraordinarily fertile period in the 1970s. As the critic John Berger observed, ‘The last period of Moore’s working life – and notably the years when he was in his late 70s or over 80 – was of an incomparable richness. Here he joins the company of Titian or Matisse in the sense that his life’s work becomes cumulative: his last works an apogee’ (J. Berger, ‘A Sense of Touch’, The Guardian , 21 September 1989, pp. 25, 47, quoted in Bacon Moore , p. 13).

The Mother and Child theme can be traced back to a sculpture made while Moore was still a student at the Royal College of Art, London. That sculpture shows the totemic, angular influence of Pre-Colombian carvings studied at the British Museum, reflective of Moore’s exploration of ideas outside the Western canon and a search for primal form. He returned frequently to the theme, by turns abstract and expressive, through the 1920s and 1930s, and most significantly during the war years. The most significant expression comes in the 1943 commission for a Madonna and Child for the church of St Matthew, Northampton, although the specifically religious context seems a little incongruous in view of the universality of the theme.

Throughout, the theme of mother and child refers not just to the parental relationship but to an expression of fundamental concepts of fertility and creation, of birth and life, and to Moore’s exploration of the essential rhythms of nature. Fascinatingly, this search folds in on itself in the sculptor’s own practice, as he himself breathes life into his models. Perhaps not surprisingly, these ideas crystalised with the birth of Moore’s own daughter Mary, named for his mother, in May 1946, which launched an even more profound campaign of exploration. This found expression in the lively sequence of Mother and Child groups of the early 1950s, such as Variation of Rocking Chair 2 , which look forward to the arrangement of for Mother and Child: Arms .

Gail Gelburd expands on the significance to Moore of the relationship between the mother and child theme and artistic practice: “Moore continuously found new ways of exploring the theme so that the imagery could take on meaning beyond the aesthetics of its form. The development of the mother and child imagery reveals that Moore’s involvement in this theme reaches beyond maternity to an inquiry into birth and creativity. The theme of the mother and child, the mother giving birth, the child struggling to emerge from the maternal womb, is like the stone giving birth to the form, the form struggling to emerge from the block of stone” ( Mother and Child, The Art of Henry Moore , exh. cat., Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York, 1987, p. 37). In the present work, the mother figure rocks back on her hips almost into the pose of that other great Moore theme the Reclining Figure . Her legs thrusting forward under drapery echo the form of rolling hills, the outlines at once maternal and geological, the forms worn as smooth as an alluvial pebble, or a river landscape. The web of limbs linking mother and child cocoons the womb-like negative space between the two figures. The angularity of the limbs emphasises the contrast between the movement of the child and the stability of the mother, between creator and progeny. The forward thrust of the infant draws the two heads almost on to the same level, closing the circle based in the swooping curves of the mother’s lap. This struggle between dependent forms sets up a tension, elegantly resolved between the two figures (evident even in his maquettes), the interlocking forms creating an interplay of differing scales which had long been a feature of both Moore’s figurative and more abstract sculpture.

The importance of this recurrent theme in Moore’ s work is internationally recognised and celebrated; other editions of Mother and Child: Arms can be found in institutions such as the Henry Moore Foundation in the UK, the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia and the Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in Japan.

Private Collection, London

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1980-1986, vol. 5, London, 1986, no. 723, p. 34-35 & pls. 124 & 125.

The classic sculpture Reclining Figure – Bone Skirt, is one of Moore’ s most recognisable and iconic figures. This is the working model for a marble sculpture which was owned by his daughter Mary and was subsequently reworked as a monumental carving in travertine marble dating from 1978. At the time Moore was spending the summers at a villa he had built near the Carrara quarries in Italy. Moore observed in 1931: “The human figure is what interests me deeply, but I have found principles of form and rhythm from the study of natural objects such as pebbles, rocks, bones, trees, plants … bones have marvellous structural strength and hard tenseness of form, subtle transition of one shape into the next…”

Moore returned again and again to the reclining figure, initially inspired by the early Mexican Chacmool sculptures he saw at the British Museum in the 1920s. The subject re-occurs throughout his career with infinite variations of form and line, here the use of drapery to accentuate the shape and continuous line of the body.

I want to be quite free of having to find a ‘ reason’ for doing the Reclining Figures, and freer still of having to find a ‘ meaning’ for them. The vital thing for an artist is to have a subject that allows to try out all kinds of formal ideas – things that he doesn’ t yet know about for certain but wants to experiment with, as Cézanne did in his ‘ Bathers’ series. In my case the reclining figure provides chances of that sort. The subject-matter is given. It’ s settled for you, and you know it and like it, so that within it, within the subject that you’ ve done a dozen times before, you are free to invent a completely new form-idea.

Henry Moore quoted in John Russell, Henry Moore , Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London 1968, p.28

Private Collection
Jeffrey Loria, New York
Kent Fine Art, New York
Private Collection US (purchased from the above 1986)
Private Collection, UK

A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture: 1974-80, Vol. 5, London, 1983, pp. 42-43, no. 765

Private Collection, USA

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture, 1955-1964, vol. 5, London, 1986, no. 778, illustration of another cast pl. 182

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 
Private Collection, Australia, 1980’s
Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel, London

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculptures and Drawings, Sculpture 1980-86, Volume 6 , Lund Humphries, London, 1999, cat.no.791
John Hedgecoe, The Sculpture of Henry Moore , published by Collins & Brown, 1998, no. 669, p. 242

“From very early on I have had an obsession with the Mother and Child theme. It has been a universal theme from the beginning of time and some of the earliest sculptures we’ve found from the Neolithic Age are of a Mother and Child. I discovered, when drawing, I could turn every little scribble, blot or smudge into a Mother and Child.” ₁

Moore’s words, well known as they are, still prompt thought. As a young artist in the 1920s, he spent hours studying the collections of the British Museum in London and Musée de l’Homme in Paris. His drawings make clear the impact of these discoveries as well the agility with which he was able to transform his themes: moulding, caressing, even on occasions harrying his material. What emerges is one of the most profound studies, in the twentieth century, of a single subject: the mother and child.

A cursory selection, from across Moore’s career, demonstrates this breadth. A heavy-set, somewhat foursquare Mother and Child (1924–5), carved from green Hornton stone, contrasts with a translucent alabaster Suckling Child (1930), which tenderly fragments and abstracts from the human form. From the next decades we might choose Moore’s serenely Northampton Madonna and Child (1943–4), a Mother and Child (1952) in which a ravenous-beaked child is restrained at arm’s length, and the tiny, almost toy-like Mother and Child: Wheels (1962). If the 1960s proved relatively sparse, the 1970s saw a regathering of momentum as well as a scattering of Moore’s approach: from sculptural picture frames, reliefs and egg forms to homages – recalling Pisano, Rubens, ‘Paleo’ and the ‘Gothic’.

The distinction between the ‘mother and child’ and ‘Madonna and Child’ is significant. When Moore was approached to create the Northampton Madonna and Child (1943–4), he was initially hesitant as to whether he could produce a religious rather than secular work of art:

It’s not easy to describe in words what this difference is, except by saying in general terms that the ‘Madonna and Child’ should have an austerity and a nobility, and some touch of grandeur (even hieratic aloofness) which is missing in the everyday ‘Mother and Child’ idea.₂    

Exploring the idea, Moore produced a series of maquettes. The proposed context and medium required a certain solemnity, reflected, in the chosen version, by the weight of drapery around the Madonna’s knees, and the breadth of her capacious lap, as she shelters the child. As Moore wrote, ‘I have tried to give a sense of complete easiness and repose, as though the Madonna could stay in that position for ever (as, being in stone, she will have to do)’. ₃

Such immobility provides a useful measure against which to compare studies of the mother and child unconnected to a religious context. Perhaps the greatest change, as Moore moved from the 1970s into the 1980s, would be an increased sense of intimacy and domesticity. Neither mother nor child is required to remain still. A child scrambles over its mother’s reclining figure, or balances on her knees, arms reaching towards her breast. In the drawings, Moore depicts the mother from behind, gently rocking the child, as it turns, or rests its head on her shoulder. These are informal poses, for which the most obvious precedent is Moore’s series of rocking chair sculptures, from the late 1940s to 1950.

Maquette for Curved Mother and Child (1980) continues this rocking theme. The mother’s body tilts as she cradles and rocks the child, such that her arms and the child’s outstretched limbs intertwine. The mother’s legs are cocooned in a closely fitting dress, emphasising the counterbalancing twist of her torso. A similar curve characterises the form of Seated Mother and Child: Thin (1980), where the child is supported upright on the mother’s hip. In Maquette for Curved Mother and Child, however, the arc is present in every aspect of its composition: from the mother’s neck to her spine and legs – even the child’s loose-limbed body – each element twisting in a slightly different direction. Moore’s maquette was enlarged in 1983, gaining in stylization if perhaps losing the immediacy of this diminutive version.

Moore acknowledged the impact that life may exert on an artist’s work, and how the birth of his daughter, in 1946, ‘re-invoked’ for him the mother and child theme. ₄ If this is the case, the fresh approach of the later works may indeed have resulted from the birth of his grandchild, in 1977. Maquette for Curved Mother and Child captures a joyous, carefree moment, witnessed as if at close hand.

₁ Moore, in Henry Spencer Moore, photographed and edited by John Hedgecoe (London: Thomas Nelson, 1968), p. 213.
₂ Moore, in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), p. 267.
₃ Ibid.
₄ See Moore, in Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, p. 66.

The Artist
Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, New York (and sold: Sotheby’s, New York, November 13, 1996, lot 314)
Private Collection, London (acquired at the above sale)
Jeanne Frank Gallery, New York
Private Collection (Acquired from the above on March 17, 1997)
Private Collection, London

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, 1980-1986, vol. 6, London, 1988, p. 51, no. 789, illustration of another cast pl. 38

The Artist, May 1981, from whom acquired by
Private Collection, New Zealand
Private Collection, U.K.
With Berkeley Square Gallery, London, 2003, where purchased by
Private Collection, U.K. by whom gifted to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
Osborne Samuel, London (Formerly Berkeley Square Gallery)

Alan Bowness, Henry Moore: Volume 6, Complete Sculpture, 1980-86, London, 1999, p.37, cat.no.790 (ill.b&w., another cast)

Rome, Vigna Antoniana, Henry Moore, 1981
Ravenna, Moore, Sculture, disegni e grafica, 1986no.13 (illustrated)

Height excludes base.

A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture: 1980-86, Vol. 6, London, 1988, p. 38, no. 803, another cast illustrated.

Marlborough Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in June 1983
Private collection

Henry Moore, 85th Birthday Exhibition: stone carvings, bronze sculptures, drawings (exhibition catalogue), Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1986, illustration of another cast p. 66
Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1980-1986, vol. 6, London, 1986, no. 873, illustrations of another cast p. 54 & pl. 114