Henry Moore

Exhibited by Osborne Samuel

Material Bronze

Dimensions 35 x 69 x 36 cm (13.75 x 27 x 14 in)

Place of Creation UK

Status Vetted

About the Work

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

Show moreless