Henry Moore

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1977

Josep Igelasias del Marquet, Henry Moore: Y El Inquietante Infinito, Barcelona, 1979,  illustration of another cast p. 10

David Mitchinson (ed.), Henry Moore Sculpture, New York, 1981, figs. 563 & 564, colour illustrations of another cast p. 272

David Mitchinson & Julian Stallabrass, Henry Moore, New York, 1991, no. 156, illustration of another cast p. 157

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, London, 1994, vol. 5, no. 674, illustration of another cast p. 27

Variegated green patina. Apart from some typical slight wear to the patina on the knees and left shoulder, this work is in very good condition.
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The subject of the reclining figure is probably the single most iconic image of Henry Moore’s œuvre. Initially inspired by Mexican sculpture (fig. 1), this theme recurs throughout the artist’s career, ranging from organic forms to near-abstract, geometric ones. Christa Lichtenstern wrote about Moore’s continuous treatment of this motif, which he called an ‘absolute obsession’: ‘The reclining figure […] formed a kind of vessel into which Moore poured his most important poetic, compositional, formal and spatial discoveries. The farthest-reaching developments in his art are thus reflected in such figures. In the early period, they demonstrated his belief in the doctrine of direct carving. Later, they embodied his espousal of the surrealist emotionalisation of figure and space. And finally, they became a focus for the analogies between figure and landscape […]. One further innovation explored in the context of this basic theme was the artist’s discovery of rhythm as a constituent force in the generation of form’ (C. Lichtenstern, Henry Moore: Work – Theory – Impact, London, 2008, p. 95).

 

The angularity of the reclining figure was a subject that fascinated Moore throughout his career. He devoted particular attention to these anatomical contours in the present sculpture from the mid-1970s, which he specifically titled Angles. While Moore usually rendered the image of the reclining female in the nude, in the present work she is draped. It is this ambiguity between the soft folds of the fabric, mostly accentuated around the legs, and the strong, solid forms of the figure's body, that lends the work much of its vitality. It was whilst working on his Shelter Drawings during the Second World War that Moore became increasingly absorbed in the manner in which drapery could denote sculptural volume. The three-dimensional effect achieved by the folds in a figure's garment is in part inspired by the sculpture and reliefs from Classical antiquity, particularly some of the Parthenon figures. 

 

David Sylvester considered Moore's use of drapery as a method of further integrating his figures into the landscape. According to him, the artist used ‘the folds to create a variant of the metaphor of the figure as a landscape [...] to connect the contrasts of sizes of folds, small, fine and delicate, in other places big and heavy, with the form of mountains, which are the crinkled skin of the earth’ (D. Sylvester, Henry Moore, New York & London, 1968, p. 109). With its heavy, solid forms, the female figure in the present sculpture appears close to the earth, and the mountainous force described by Sylvester can be seen in the triangular shape of her legs. With her backwards gaze and her monumental, dignified head looking into infinity, the figure acquires a timeless quality, symbolising the eternal expanse of the universe and man's presence in it.

Another cast of the present work is in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, England. In 1979 Moore also executed a monumental version of Reclining Figure: Angles, casts of which are in the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.