Henry Moore

David Sylvester, Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1948, vol. 1, London, 1969, p. 16, no. 266, p. 159 (illustration and cataloguing refer to the large version)

Good condition. Variations in patina and some irregularities in the bronze (particularly in center of figure); a few small losses (particularly on knee and under bottom arm.)
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Henry Moore was first exposed to images of Pre-Columbian art while an art student at the Leeds School of Art. After his arrival in London in 1921, where he was given a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art, Moore spent his free time exploring the treasures of the British Museum. Although it is not known when he first saw the reclining god Chacmool (Fig. 1), there is a sketch of that deity in one of his notebooks dating from 1922. Moore's first sculptural interpretation of Chacmool, executed in stone in 1929, was Reclining Figure (Fig. 2).  That seminal work echoes the Toltec version of Chacmool that Moore saw in the Palais du Trocadéro as early as 1922, when the artist made his semi-annual trips to visit the museums of Paris. Moore wrote in 1941, "of works from the Americas, Mexican art was exceptionally well represented in the (British) Museum. Mexican sculpture...seemed to me true and right. It's 'stoniness' by which I mean its truth to material, its tremendous power without loss of sensitiveness, its astonishing variety and fertility of form-invention and its approach to a full three-dimensional conception of form, make it unsurpassed in my opinion by any other period of stone sculpture" (Manfred Fath, Henry Moore: From the Inside Out, New York, p. 19).

As Moore explored the sculpture medium throughout his prolific career, his constant fascination with the reclining figure never ceased.  Like many of his recumbent figures that exhibit the classic turned head, raised knees and resting arm, Reclining Figure faithfully echoes Moore's favorite deity, Chacmool. While paying homage to his source image, Moore's own evocative reclining figures transcend the bounds of secular art to become objects of marvel and monuments in their own right.

Fig. 1 Chacmool, Chichén Itzá, Mexico

Fig. 2  Photograph of the artist with Reclining Figure, Leeds City Art Gallery, 1929