Henry Moore 1898-1986

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

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

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.

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
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.

Piccadilly Gallery, London

Marlborough Fine Art, London

M.R. Feheley, Toronto

Christie’s, London 1979

Private Collection

Sotheby’s London, 1996

Berkeley Square Gallery, London

Private Collection, UK

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

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 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.

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

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.

Christie’s London, 1999
Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich
Private Collection, UK

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG44.75; HMF 2259a, p.228-229

The six reclining figures in this wartime drawing are beautifully drawn ideas for sculpture typical of the artist’s working method. The six figures are isolated in space and float on ledges. These ideas were developed in a drawing from the same period Reclining Figures: Ideas for Stone Sculpture, 1944, in which each figure appears in an individual pod in a subterranean setting. 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
Curt Valentin, Buchholz Gallery, New York 
Mrs. Vera List, philanthropist and supporter of contemporary art, Greenwich, Connecticut
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel Ltd 

Henry Moore, Volume Two: Sculpture and Drawings Since 1948, (London: Lund Humphries, 1955)

Robert Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1969, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970) 

Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Drawings, Volume 3, 1940-49; (London and Much Hadham: Lund Humphries, 2001, p.288, ref AG48.43; HMF 2515

New York, New York, Buchholz Gallery, Henry Moore, March 6-31, 1951, illustrated cat no. 66 (in this catalogue the drawing is incorrectly dated 1949)

This work is registered in the Henry Moore Foundation archives as HMF 2515 and research file number 2020.38. 

Rocking Chairs was purchased at Buchholz Gallery in 1951. The drawing was executed in 1948, four years before the bronze, Mother and Child on Ladderback Rocking Chair. In this drawing, Moore depicts five figure groups on rocking bases, with the
mother figure holding the child in various positions. Each group is three-dimensional, indicating that Moore conceived of the figure group as a sculpture from the beginning.

Moore’s series of sculptural rocking chairs was begun in 1950, when his daughter Mary, a much-loved and long-awaited child, was four years old. Although Moore had explored the theme of the mother and child since the 1920s, these new works showed a joy and tenderness born of experience. Will Grohman described them as ‘enchanting impromptus, the offspring of a lighter muse.’ 1 Their creation offers a glimpse both into Moore’s domestic life and the extent to which his personal and creative identity intertwined. Just as he experimented with how to balance the sculptures, so that they rocked perfectly, he would encourage Mary to think practically through play. For her eighth birthday party he produced a set of scales and invented a game to guess the weight of each guest. Moore’s estimates, perhaps unsurprisingly for a sculptor, proved accurate to within a few pounds. 2

Moore’s drawings provide a different insight. In the Rocking Chair Notebook (1947–8) he experimented with radically varied designs for the chair as well as the figures seated within them. The drawing, Rocking Chairs (1948), shows Moore adjusting the postures of mother and child so that each suggests an altered dynamic: from a protective embrace, to the joyous wriggling of the child held aloft, to an independent stepping forward, away from the mother’s arms. While mass is weighed through the technique Moore described as ‘sectional drawing’, dividing surfaces into jigsaw grids to highlight curves and planes, relatively little attention is paid to the chairs’ potential for movement: certain of the rockers seem implausibly flat. Instead, Moore lavishes his imagination on the figures. Grohmann noted how such variation developed across the span of the rocking chair series, although his words apply equally to this sheet of drawings: ‘heads became archaic knots, the bodies clothed skeletons, but the expression remains elated.’ 3

Rocking Chairs was bought in 1951 by the American philanthropist and collector, Vera List (1908–2002), from the Buchholz Gallery in New York. List, who a year later bought Moore’s Mother and Child on Ladderback Rocking Chair (1952), was an early and dedicated patron. In 1961 she and her husband sponsored the commission of Moore’s large-scale Reclining Figure (1963–5), in bronze, for New York’s Lincoln Center.

1.    Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, new enlarged edition (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1960), p. 142.

2.       Mary Moore, in Elizabeth Day, ‘The Moore Legacy’, The Observer (27 July 2008).

3.       Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, p. 143

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

Private collection UK

Recorded in the Henry Moore Foundation Archives as HMF2440a

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

“My drawings are done mainly as a help towards making sculpture – as a means of generating ideas for sculpture, tapping oneself for the initial idea: as a way of sorting out ideas and developing them.

Also sculpture compared with drawings is a slow means of expression, and I find drawing a useful outlet for ideas which there is not time enough to realise as a sculpture. And I use drawing as a method of study and observation of natural forms (drawing from life, drawings of bones, shells etc.)”

Notes on sculpture, (1937) reprinted in ‘Henry Moore Complete Sculpture, vol 1, published by Lund Humphries, 1988, p.xxxv

Gimpel Fils, London, 1955
Private collection since the 1970’s
Osborne Samuel, London

The drawing is catalogued in the Henry Moore Foundation as HMF 2448a 

Kenneth Clark wrote about Moore’s dramatic staged group drawings in 1978:

In his drawings Moore makes the dramatic quality of his forms explicit by relating them to each other in a unified space….In many of his early drawings dramatic groups, the protagonists are familiar figures from his notebooks, but they are arranged dramatically near the front of a sort of stage. Occassionally shadowy projections of themselves hang in the space behind or they are echoed in a kind of backcloth … (or) put into a bare cell, with several rectangular windows … What led Moore to imprison his creations in this way it is difficult to determine. Perhaps he felt that it allowed an unrestricted concentration on their plastic qualities.

Kenneth Clarke, Henry Moore Drawings, Thames and Hudson, 1978, p.113 – 114

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 4, , number AG69-77.16, HMF3197

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 4, page 270, number AG72-74.37, HMF 73/74 (77)

From The Red Notebook, p.68 verso

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 4 , number  AG72-74.45; HMF73/74.84

From Sketchbook 4, Page 44

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 4, number AG 73-79.30; HMF74/6.30

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

Henry Moore, The Complete Drawings, volume 4, number HMF75.77; AG75.8

From Sketchbook 1, Page 8

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)

Private Collection, UK

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

David Mitchinson, Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios, published by Patrick Cramer, Geneva, 2010, p.11, illustrated fig, 3

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

c.1920

One of only 3 recorded impressions. (the Henry Moore Foundation acquired one of the three copies in 1985)

Dancing Figures is a rare and early linocut from c.1920, 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.

On returning to Castleford, his Yorkshire home town, in February 1919 after demobilisation at the end of the First World War, Moore joined the pottery classes of his former art teacher Alice Gostick, before going in September that year to Leeds School of Art as a sculpture student. Though studying in Leeds Moore continued to live in Castleford and to spend some evenings at Alice Gostick’s classes. Dancing Figures c.1920, a linoleum print on olive-green wove paper measuring 165 x 344mm, dates from this period.

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’

Signed and numbered from the edition of X, one of ten artist’s proofs aside from the edition of 50

From the album `Meditations on the Effigy’

Signed and numbered from the edition of X, one of ten artist’s proofs aside from the edition of 50

A Printer’s proof aside from the edition of 100

From the Auden Poems Portfolio. 

From the Auden Poems Portfolio.

From the Auden Poems Portfolio.

Printer’s proof aside from the edition of 80

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

A printer’s proof aside from the edition of 200. 

Henry Moore: Catalogue of Graphic Work Volume III 1976-1979, published by Gerald Cramer, CGM/422

Mr & Mrs Rowland Howarth
Thence by descent

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

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

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.

Acquired by Philippe Dotremont, Brussels, circa 1950, subsequent to the exhibition in Bern, 1950 but before the publication of the Tate Galley exhibition catalogue in 1951.

Carlo Ponti & Sophia Loren

Private European Collection

Berkeley Square Gallery, London

Private Collection, UK

Sculpture & drawings by Henry Moore, exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London, arranged by the Arts Council of Great Britain on the occasion of The Festival of Britain, 1951, fig.22

Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Munich, 1967, ill.pl.88

Robert Melville (ed) Henry Moore Carvings, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1967, illustrated.

Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture & drawings 1921-1969, New York, 1970, no.91 illustrated.

Elda Fezzi, Henry Moore, 1977, ill.p.11

Charles Harrison (ed), Unit 1, Portsmouth, May 1978, ill.p.37

Franco Russoli & David Mitchinson, Henry Moore, Escultura, Barcelona, 1981, no.84, ill. p.59

Alex Robertson et al (ed) Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties, Leeds, 1986, ill.pp.210-211.

Susan Compton, Henry Moore, London, 1988, ill.p.64

David Sylvester (ed) & Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, 1921-48, vol.1, London, 1990, no.138, ill.p.84

Cercle d’Art (ed), Moore 1898-1986, Paris, 1996, ill. pl.28

Henry Moore, Sculpture of the 20th Century, exh. cat. Dallas Museum of Art, 2001, illustrated in photographs pp.67, 213

Henry Moore, edited by Christopher Stephens, published by Tate Publishing, 2010, no 49, illustrated, p.132

London, Mayor Gallery. Unit 1, April 1934, no 30 as Composition (Corsehill stone)

London, New Burlington Galleries, International Surrealist Exhibition, 1936

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Henry Moore, 1946

Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, Henry Moore, 1950, no.23 (illustrated in the catalogue)

London, Marlborough Fine Arts, Henry Moore: Stone & Wood Carvings, 1961, no.16

London, Marlborough Fine Arts, Art in Britain 1930-1940 centred around Axis Circle Unit One, March-April 1965, no 83 (illustrated in the catalogue)

London, The Tate Gallery, Henry Moore, July-September 1968, no.29 (illustrated in the catalogue)

Florence, Forte Belvedere, Moore e Firenze, 1972, no.19

London, Royal Academy, Henry Moore, September-December 1988, no 19 (illustrated in the catalogue)

London, Tate Modern, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, 2001-2002, no.39 with tour to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Saint-Paul de Vence, Foundation Maeght, Henry Moore – Retrospective, 2002, no.39

Henry Moore, Tate Gallery, London, February-August 2010, no 49

Private Collection, purchased at the November 1972 exhibition 

Thence by descent

Osborne Samuel, London

Exhibition catalogue, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, London, Lefevre Gallery, 1972, pp. 8-9, no. 1, illustrated.
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1980-86, Vol 6, London, 1999, p. 28, no. 175a, another cast illustrated.

London, Lefevre Gallery, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, November – December 1972, no. 1. (this cast)

Sir Kenneth Clark, Saltwood (acquired from the artist)
The Honourable Colette Clark, Oxford (gift from the above)
Fischer Fine Art, Ltd., London
Ryda & Robert H Levi
Christie’s, New York, 2016
Private Collection, USA, 2016 (acquired from the above)
Osborne Samuel, London

David Sylvester (ed.) and Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, 1921-48, vol. I, London, 1990, no.238. (not illustrated)
J. Hedgecoe and H. Moore, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 176, no. 4 (another cast illustrated; plaster version illustrated, pp. 163 and 269; dated 1944).
A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Sculptures and Drawings 1964-73, London, 1977, vol. 4 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 10, pl. A).
B. von Erich Steingrber, Henry Moore Maquetten, Pantheon, 1978 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 24, fig. 23).
R. Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, London, 1987, fig. 88 (terracotta version illustrated).
J. Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision, The Sculpture of Henry Moore, London, 1998, p. 210, no. 239 (another cast)

Other casts are held in the following  collections: Cleveland Museum of Art, USA  (Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection); The Tate, UK; The Henry Moore Foundation, UK.

The Family Groups are Moore’s most socially-minded sculptures, and considered perhaps the most admired subject in his oeuvre. He conceived this idea for a public commission related to the building of new towns and schools in Britain before the Second World War. It was not until 1944, however, during the height of the war, that it appeared funding for the commission might finally become available. Moore sculpted models of triadic as well as four-figure family groups. The combination of both parents plus two children was capable of generating more varied arrangements and a wider range of emotional expression.
These sculptures celebrated the nation’s anticipated return to peacetime well-being and the pleasures of family life. Moore intended that they should inspire a renewed emphasis on fundamental humanist values, while providing an aesthetic model for community spirit and co-operation, with the promise of progressive social services for all. These sculptures rejoice in the start of new young families. After a half-decade of wartime casualties and a low birth rate, to once again become fruitful and multiply was a crucial requirement for the economic and social revival of Britain during the post-war era.
Moore carried a lifelong dedication to the theme and depiction of family. His very first surviving stone carving, executed in 1922, was entitled Mother and Child (Lund Humphries, no. 3). By 1940, of the more than 150 sculptures he had produced to that date, 22 were versions of the Mother and Child theme. This subject had become something of an obsession for the sculptor; it allowed him to create a formal interaction between two figures—one small, the other much larger—based on their powerful and affecting emotional connection. At the same time, each of the figures contributed their particular weight and volume to form a single, unified, plastic entity.
In 1943, during the early years of the Second World War, Moore was commissioned to carve a Madonna and Child for St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton, England. This project provided the sculptor an opportunity to cast the mother and child theme in a traditional sacred context, in which the figures took on qualities, as Moore described them, “of austerity, and a nobility, and some touch of grandeur (even hieratic aloofness) which is missing in the everyday ‘Mother and Child’ idea” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 267).
The Family Group theme materialized when Moore was asked by Henry Morris and Walter Gropius to create a sculpture for a village college at Impington near Cambridge. The college’s ideal of both child and adult education in a single institution appealed to Moore, who was clearly preoccupied with the link between parent and child. The occasion of a commission for a public sculpture, this time on behalf of an educational institution, encouraged the sculptor to consider the importance of the family as the primary human social unit whose close interpersonal relationships provided an exemplary guide for wider communal values.
Will Grohmann discusses the subject of the family group, “In the years between 1944 and 1947 he [Moore] produced a number of larger and smaller variations in stone, bronze and terracotta, differing considerably from one another, being both naturalistic and non-naturalistic, though never as abstract as the ‘reclining figures’. The theme does not hem him in, but it demands a certain readiness to enter into the meaning of a community such as the family” (W. Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141).

Probably Roland, Browse & Delbanco, where acquired by an eminent USA collector, c.1946
Thence by descent
Private Collection, USA

Ionel Jianou, Henry Moore, Arted, Paris, 1968, no. 226, p. 74
Giulio Carlo Argan, Henry Moore, Henry N. Abrams, New York, 1971, no. 77, illustrated n.p. (another cast) 
David Sylvester (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1948, Lund Humphries, London, 1988, vol. I, no. 239, p. 15

A cast is held at the Smart Museum, Chicago USA. The terracotta original and a bronze cast is held by the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, UK. The larger version of this bronze, the so-called Stevenage Family Group, are held by the Tate, London, MOMA, New York, Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan, the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena & the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham. 

Before the war Moore was asked to create a work for a large progessive school in Impington. This lead to the idea of the Family Group and Moore made a series of Family Group maquettes, this cast being one of them. Moore discusses at length why this cast differs from the larger version which was eventually realised for the Barclay School in Stevenage:

The main differences between the two are in the heads, especially in the head of the man. In the small version (this bronze) the split head of the man gives a vitality and interest necessary to the composition, particularly as all three heads have only slight indications for features. When it comes to the life-size version, (the Family Group in Stevenage) the figures each becomes more obviously human and related to each other and the split head of the man became impossible for it was so unlike the woman and child. (There is a different connection between things which are three feet from each other, as the large heads are, and things which one sees in the same field of vision only two or three inches apart).

Collection of the artist. Collection of Ann H. Zwinger.
By descent, Ann H. Zwinger Trust.

Orebro, Sweden, 1952

Dimensions include the artist’s base Height 2cm; 3/4 in

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 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 150^th 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.

Private Collection, USA

D. Mitchinson (ed.), Henry Moore: with comments by the artist, London, 1981, pp. 106, 311, no. 203 (another cast illustrated)
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1949-54, Vol. 2, London, 1986, p. 31, no. 289a, pls. 34-35 (another cast illustrated)
S. Compton, Henry Moore: Catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibition, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1988, p. 226, no. 112 (lead version illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: Sculpture from the 40s and 50s, London, Waddington Galleries, 1995, pp. 14-15, no. 5 (lead version illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: War and Utility, London, Imperial War Museum, 2006, p. 51, no. 22 (another cast illustrated)

Conceived in 1950 in lead and cast in an edition of 9 in bronze in 1972.

Acquired by an eminent USA collector, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1955
Thence by descent
Private Collection, USA

H. Read, Henry Moore, vol. II, Sculpture and Drawings 1949-1954, London, 1965, no. 313, pp. xxvi (illustrated pl. 43)
R. Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, 1921-1969, London, 1970, no. 431, p. 356 (another cast illustrated)
D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore: Sculpture, London, 1981, no. 223, pp. 114 & 311 (detail of another cast illustrated)
W.S. Lieberman, exh. cat., Henry Moore: 60 Years of His Art, New York, 1983, pp. 81 & 123 (another cast illustrated p. 81)
S. Compton, exh. cat., Henry Moore, London, 1988, p. 231, no. 123 (another cast illustrated)
C. Stephens, ed., exh. cat., Henry Moore, London, 2010, no. 125, p. 186 (another cast illustrated)

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Henry Moore Sculpture 1950-1960, November – December 1960, cat.13 (another cast)

Other casts owned by the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull and the McNay Art Collection, San Antonio, Texas

Created in 1952 and cast in an edition of seven, Henry Moore’s Mother and Child on Ladderback Chair is an enchanting exploration of the tender relationship between parent and child. Capturing the sense of wonder and intense love the two figures share in this moment, the sculpture conveys an impression of the joy that can be found in even the simplest of everyday activities, and was inspired by the artist’s own experiences as a parent following the birth of his beloved daughter Mary in 1946. While the mother and child theme had long fascinated the artist, leading him to consider it one of his fundamental obsessions, the subject took on a new level of importance in his sculptures as he became a father.

When Mary was just four years old the artist designed three small rocking chair sculptures for her amusement, which moved gently backwards and forwards on their curved bases when touched. Each focusing on a seated mother and child, these whimsical, kinetic works moved at different speeds to one another, the shape of their bases and the dispersion of weight in their forms affecting their range of motion. Two years later, in 1952, the artist revisited the subject, adding a more elaborate chair on which his figures could sit, introducing the ‘ladderback’ detailing to its design. A second, enlarged version of this composition was subsequently created, although Moore felt that this new size and weight restricted the potential movement of the sculpture and removed the rocking function, planting the legs of the chair onto a heavy, rectangular base instead, as in the present work.

In keeping with Moore’s style during the opening years of the 1950s, there is a touch of surrealism in his treatment of form, as both figures’ limbs and torsos appear thinned and elongated to new extremes, their heads transformed into abstract, amorphous shapes. The addition of a triangular bib-like protrusion at the woman’s shoulders, meanwhile, creates a new connection between the two bodies, and emphasises the mother’s gaze as she focuses all her attention on her child. In this way, the present work eschews the playful energy of the previous rocking chair sculptures, and instead focuses on the powerful emotional connection that exists between the two figures, imbuing the motif with a new monumentality and sense of permanence.

Lefevre Gallery, London
Private Collection, purchased from the above at the November 1972 exhibition
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel, London

Exhibition catalogue, Mostra di Henry Moore, Florence, Forte di Belvedere, 1972, n.p., no. 75 (another cast illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, London, Lefevre Gallery, 1972, pp. 54-55, no. 24, illustrated (this cast)
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1949-54, Vol. 2, London, 1986, p. 43, no. 331a (another cast illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: Sketch Models and Working Models, London, Southbank Centre, 1990, p. 31, no. 13, fig. 25 (another cast illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore In the Light of Greece, Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, 2000, p. 157, no. 17 (another cast illustrated)
J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: A Monumental Vision, Cologne, 2005, p. 217, no. 304, (another cast illustrated)

Florence, Forte di Belvedere, Mostra di Henry Moore, May – September 1972, no. 75 (another cast exhibited)
London, Lefevre Gallery, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, November – December 1972, no. 24 (this cast)
Madrid, British Council, Palacio de Velázquez, Henry Moore: Sculptures, Drawings and Graphics 1921-1981, May – August 1981, no. 135 (another cast exhibited)
London, Southbank Centre, Henry Moore: Sketch Models and Working Models, 1990, no. 13 (another cast exhibited): this exhibition travelled to Coventry, Mead Gallery, May – June 1990; Huddersfield, Art Gallery, June – August 1990; Wrexham, Library Arts Centre, August – October 1990; Bristol, Museum and Art Gallery, October – November 1990; Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery, December 1990 – January 1991; Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, January – March 1991; Stirling, Smith Art Gallery, March – April 1991.
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Henry Moore In the Light of Greece, June – September 2000, no. 17 (another cast exhibited)

The Artist

Marina & Willy Staehelin-Peyer Collection, USA (Acquired directly from the artist) 

 Private Collection, UK

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

Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan (permanent collection)

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

Private Collection, UK

Alan Bowness and Herbert Read (Ed), Henry Moore, Sculpture and drawings Volume 3, Sculpture 1955-64, London, Lund Humphries, no.495, p.54 

Henry  Moore Animals, Gerhardt Marcks Haus, Bremen, 1997, p.185

Casts of Snake Head  are with the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada and the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham.

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

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, 1986 no.13 (illustrated)

Height excludes base.

A cast is owned by the Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, UK

Though a pervasive theme throughout Moore’s oeuvre, the artist created more images of the Mother and Child in the final decade of his life than in any other period of his career.  Moore wrote in 1979: “The ‘Mother and Child’ 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, the 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” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 213). 

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

Dimensions include artist’s bronze base

A cast from the edition is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, gifted by Jeffrey Loria

The original plaster for this work is in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation and visible in the Bourne maquette studio. One child is shown with the mother. 

Moore made several drawings for and of this sculpture, using the device of two children to emphasise the interaction between the children and the mother. This is the only recorded sculpture with this theme