Henry Moore

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York
Alexander Liberman, New York
E.V. Thaw & Co., New York
Mr & Mrs John Hay Whitney, New York (acquired from the above in November 1967; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 10th May 1999, lot 34)
Alfred Taubman, New York (purchased at the above sale; sale: Sotheby's, New York, The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman, 5th November 2015, lot 101T)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Alan G. Wilkinson, The Drawings of Henry Moore, New York & London, 1984, p. 249
Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1940-49, London, 2001, vol. III, no. AG 45.8, illustrated p. 236

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and hinged to the mount at several points with tape along the upper edge of the verso. There are artist's pinholes to each corner. There is some very minor stable shrinkage visible to the thickest areas of the black and white pigment to both figures. There is a tiny pin-size hole to the front edge of the right figure's seat and a diagonal surface scratch (approx 12.5cm. long) running from the upper right quadrant to the figure's shoulder. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Two Women and Children is closely related to the bronze Family Group of 1944 (Alan Bowness & Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1965, vol. I, no. 233). Executed a year after the bronze, this work reverses the positions of the figures and more fully separates the two pairs. Unlike many drawings that served as the studies for sculpture, this drawing was made after a completed sculpture, highlighting the inter-relatedness of the two media in Henry Moore's creative process. As the artist himself said, ‘although I am primarily a sculptor, I’ve never separated my interest or appreciation of painting from sculpture’ (Alan G. Wilkinson, op. cit., p.11).

Both the Family Group and the Mother and Child themes were central to Moore's art. In this drawing and the related sculptural groups, he conveys both the gravitas and timelessness of the traditional figurative pose of the Madonna and Child, and the intimacy and temporality of a mother holding her child in her lap. In Moore’s own words: ‘From very early on I have had an obsession with the Mother and Child theme. It has been a universal theme from the beginning of time and some of the earliest sculptures we’ve found from the Neolithic Age are of a Mother and Child. I discovered when drawing, I could turn every little scribble, blot or smudge into a Mother and Child. (Later, I did the same with the Reclining Figure theme!) So that I was conditioned, as it were, to see it in everything. I suppose it could be explained as a 'Mother' complex’ (Henry Moore & John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist, London, 1986, p. 155).