Henry Moore

David Finn (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above circa the 1970s)
Thence by descent

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture, 1980-86, vol. 5, London, 1983, no. 731, illustrations of another cast p. 36 & pl. 135

Work is in very good condition. Variegated green and brown patina. There are a few small spots of patina rubbing on the base and a few very small nicks throughout but otherwise fine.
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"There are two particular motives or subjects which I have constantly used in my sculpture in the last twenty years," Moore once wrote, "they are the Reclining Figure idea and the Mother and Child idea. Perhaps of the two the Mother and Child has been the more fundamental obsession" (Herbert Read, Henry Moore: Mother and Child, New York, 1966, p. 29). Conceived in 1982, the present work is a fine example of the latter theme. Moore has rendered his figures neither passive nor lifeless, but alert and anticipating the movements of one another. The child climbs playfully on the mother, who calmly lovingly supports and gazes upon the child. The mother balances the child’s shifting weight with her extended arm, and somewhere in the soft contours of the bronze, the mother and child morph into one entity. The spatial relationship between the figures draws its immediate appeal from this meditated balance of playfulness and profundity, as is so often found in Moore’s Mother and Child series. With its simplicity of form and complexity of meaning, this engaging work exemplifies the aesthetic that dominated Moore's art throughout his career.

One of the most common artistic themes across centuries and continents, the mother and child motif is ever-present and evolving. Ancient Egyptian and Pre-Columbian societies produced and worshipped mother-child imagery, believing it was imbued with great power of rejuvenation and fertility, and later Medieval and Renaissance artists depicted the Madonna and child for religious worship (see fig. 2). Moore was mindful of the Christian connotations of this theme, though in the present work he has undoubtedly secularized the subject, imbuing the composition with a universality that transcends religion.

As Gail Gelburd comments, "The theme of mother and child, then, not only refers to the paternal relationships but is about fertility, maternity and growth—universal ideas... The mother and child motif goes beyond the image to a primal motif based on the theme of life and birth, for Moore it means creativity. The art is reminiscent of some of the earliest primitive images due to its conceptual base. Moore's work is an attempt to get at the essential nature and to shape it from within... He breathes life and vitality into the inanimate object. The mother and child sculptures are not only a symbol of maternity but of creativity itself" (Gail Gelburd in Mother and Child: The Art of Henry Moore (exhibition catalogue), Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, New York, 1987, p. 27).