Henry Moore

Jane Wade, Ltd., New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above on October 19, 1965)
Thence by descent

Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1921-1969, New York, 1970, no. 418, illustration of another cast n.p. 
Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture, 1949-1954, vol. 2, London, 1986, no. 292a, illustration of another cast p. 33

Attractive brown patina. Some minor dust in the crevices, consistent with age and handling. This work is very good condition.
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The present work is an elegant maquette of the monumental bronze Reclining Figure, which Moore was commissioned to produce by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the 1951 Festival of Britain (Herbert Read, op. cit., p. XVII). The subject of the reclining figure is arguably the single most iconic image of Moore’s oeuvre, and one which helped define his artistic output for many years to come.

Moore's fascination with the reclining figure may be traced back to his arrival in London, in 1921, when he was first exposed to Pre-Columbian treasures at the British Museum. 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. Its 'stoniness' by which I mean its truth and 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" (quoted in Manfred Fath, Henry Moore: From the Inside Out, New York, 2009, p. 19).

This subject reoccurred and evolved throughout the Moore’s career, ranging from organic forms to near-abstract, geometric ones. The artist himself described the progression of his sculpture as "becoming less representational, less outwardly a visual copy, and so what some people would call more abstract; but only because in this way I can present the human psychological context of my work with the greatest clearness and intensity" (quoted in Henry Moore: The Reclining Figure (exhibition catalogue), The Columbus Museum, 1984, p. 131).

In 1948, Moore was awarded the international prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, cementing his reputation as the most important sculptor of his time.