Henry Moore, O.M., C.H.

Peter Rhodes
His Sale, Sotheby's London, 23^rd April 1969, lot 197, where acquired by the present owners

Reading Museum, English Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Mr Peter Rhodes, February – March 1961;
London, Marlborough Fine Art, A Tribute to Henry Moore 1898 - 1986, May - June 1988, cat. no.11.

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Drawings, Volume 3, 1940-49, HMF in association with Lund Humphries, London 2001, cat. no.AG 43.114, HMF 2164, p.197.

The following condition report has been compiled by the paper conservator and restorer, Jane McAusland Support This work is on a sheet of wove paper, free from any backing. There are artist pinholes at all four corners, and the sheet shows slight undulations. The condition is good. Medium Typically the maroon/red pigment has faded (the original colour is visible under the mount) and there is a slight loss of ink in the signature. Otherwise the condition is good. Held in a plaster gilt frame under glass Note This work was viewed outside studio conditions Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The present work is one of a small group of four variants on the theme of three female figures and a child, of which two carry the title The Presentation. The subject of the drawings is somewhat obscure, but all show slight variations on the central motif of the passing of the child between two figures while a third holds what appears to be a towel or cloth of some kind. Writing in 1974, Kenneth Clark suggested that the figures 'seem to be taking part in some ancient ritual'. Three of the four versions in the group show an extremely high level of working, incorporating a variety of techniques and media, including watercolour, wax resist, pen and ink and scraffito, and their large size suggests that Moore clearly viewed them as a significant group.

The scale of the figures and their manner of rendering shows a clear link to the 'shelter' figures of 1940-41, and the suggestion that the figures form a linked unit or even family group is strong. There are a number of precedents for such a gathering amongst the earlier works, such as Group of Shelterers during an Air Raid (AG41.62) (Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario), but as Clark identified, these figures have a rather more idealised feeling about them, and it may be that Moore was drawing on other sources for inspiration. In 1942, he had been commissioned by Rev. Walter Hussey to produce a large Madonna and Child carving for the church of St Matthew's, Northampton. Moore seems to have made slow progress with ideas for the work and most of the drawings relating to the sculpture date from 1943 and thus are contemporary with the present work. Within this group of Mother and Child studies are some of a more domestic character, such as Two Women Bathing a Child (AG43.103) (Private Collection). This domestic interplay of figures does become a more frequent element in the drawings of 1944 when Moore was beginning to work on the Family Group sculptures and also in some of the illustrations Moore made for The Rescue, a melodrama written by Edward Sackville-West and loosely based on Homer's Odyssey. Broadcast as a radio play, with music by Britten, it was published in 1945 with illustrations by Moore, but many less than he had produced. A work such as Euryclea Holding Telemachus while Penelope Scratches Odysseus' Outline on the Wall (AG44.41) (Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie) incorporates the three figures and a child format of the present work but its obvious illustrative character renders it a little apart from much of Moore's contemporary work. However, it does illustrate how once a particular theme began to occupy his imagination, Moore would incorporate elements of it into a variety of apparently disparate works.

The obvious religious connotations of the Madonna and Child commission initially troubled Moore but he later recalled that this forced him to give the piece a character that would differentiate it from a normal mother and child study. It may therefore be worth considering if the artist's appraisal of an overtly religious subject may have influenced the group including the present work and specifically the use of the title, The Presentation. In all four versions, the right hand figure appears to be consistently presented as female, and the central figure as male. In the three most similar works in the group, the positioning of the figures suggests that the left hand figure is in attendance on the central figure, and in the two versions that are titled The Presentation, the action of passing the child from the right hand female figure to the central figure is quite explicit. This grouping and interaction between the figures thus suggests that perhaps Moore was thinking about another episode connected with the Madonna and Child, the Biblical story of The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Recorded in the Gospel of Luke 2:22-40, Mary and Joseph take the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to perform the redemption of the firstborn, in obedience to the Law of Moses. Whilst Moore is not directly drawing on any specific depiction of the subject, his clear experimentation with such a theme is very much in keeping with his work on the Madonna and Child where he became fascinated by the nuances that elevated a simple mother and child study to a rendition of the mother and child.