Conceived in 1939, the present work is one of the most complex and sophisticated examples of Moore’s pre-war reclining figures. Moore had signed the Surrealist manifesto in 1936 and in 1937 became a member of the English Surrealist Group. Moore traveled in Spain in the mid-1930s, and like his Spanish contemporary Julio González, he produced works during this period that were neither wholly figurative nor totally abstract but showed a consummate understanding of the crosscurrents of European Surrealist and Constructivist movements.

The outbreak of war in 1939 gave a sudden check to the sculptor’s work, with materials becoming increasingly difficult to source, and he had to give up teaching at the Chelsea School of Art when the college was evacuated from London. But as the critic Herbert Read noted as early as 1934, Moore already stood out as an artist for “the consistency of his course, the gathering power, the increased clearness of his intention” (Herbert Read, Henry Moore Sculptor, 1934, p.16). The pioneering ideas expressed in later masterpieces such as his 1951 Reclining Figure: Festival (fig.1), his unique sense of balance and weight, space and mass, can be traced back to earlier experiments of the pre-war period, articulated beautifully in the present form.

The formal daring and attenuated elements of Moore’s sculptures of the 1930s were in part allowed by his decision to experiment with lead: "The lead figures came at a stage in my sculpture career when I wanted to experiment with thinner forms than stone could give and, of course, in metal you can have very thin forms. So this thinness that one could make and this desire for making space became something I wanted to do. Yet I couldn't afford in those days to make plasters and have them cast into bronze because I would have had to send them and pay a huge fee to the bronze foundry. Whereas lead I could melt on the kitchen stove and pour it into a mould myself. In fact I ruined my wife's saucepans because the lead was so heavy that it bent the handles and the pans were sometimes put out of shape. But I could mould it myself and do the casting myself and it was soft enough when cast to work on it and give a refinement; I could cut it down thinner, and finish the surface, so for me lead was both economically possible and physically more reliable" (quoted in David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Sculpture with Comments by the Artist, Barcelona, 1981, p. 75).