Henry Moore

Estate of the artist

Jeffrey Loria, New York

Private Collection, Los Angeles

Acquired on 5 March 2001 by the present owner

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings: Sculpture 1974-80, vol. 5, London, 1983, no. 708, p. 31; illustration of another cast; pls. 102-03, illustration of another cast (dated 1976-78)

Columbus Museum of Art (and traveling), Henry Moore: The Reclining Figure, 1984-85, nos. 67, 67a and 67b, p. 98, illustrations of other casts (dated 1976-78)

Exh. Cat., Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts (and traveling), Henry Moore: From the Inside Out, 1996-97, no. 107, p. 170, illustration in color of the plaster

Exh. Cat., Paris, Musée Rodin, Henry Moore: L’atelier, 2010-11, no. 198, p. 193, illustration in color of the plaster

Exh. Cat., San Diego Museum of Art, Albuquerque Museum and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, O’Keeffe and Moore, 2023-24, no. 61, p. 52; p. 101, illustration in color of another cast

Conceived in 1978, Working Model for Reclining Figure: Hand stands as a compelling testament to Henry Moore’s lifelong engagement with the reclining human form. Synthesizing the organic and the abstract, the present work exemplifies the technical mastery and poetic clarity characteristic of the artist's mature oeuvre.

Moore identified three fundamental poses of the human body—standing, seated, and reclining—noting that the reclining posture offered the greatest compositional freedom. From the 1920s through the late 1970s, he returned to this theme, progressively abstracting, segmenting, and reconfiguring the human form into elemental, archetypal shapes. Reclining Figure: Hand belongs to the final phase of his career, a period marked by a distilled and expressive clarity in form. By this time, Moore had reached a state of fluency in his practice: “there’s no need any longer to search for a personal style: I find work comes naturally” (Henry Moore quoted in Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings: Sculpture 1974-80, vol. 5, London, 1983, p. 7).

This sense of liberation enabled him to move beyond the more representational character of his early works, toward forms imbued with abstraction and psychological intensity. Moore himself described this progression:

“My work became 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.”

(Moore quoted in Philip James, Henry Moore on Sculpture, New York, 1967, p. 68)

Moore’s creative process was inspired by natural objects. He often collected flints, bones, and stones from the landscape around his studio, using their shapes as a source of inspiration. For Reclining Figure: Hand, he combined the forms of flint and bone, starting with plasticine modeling, then progressing through plaster before casting the final bronze. The shapes of the breasts and arm in the sculpture clearly reflect the stone’s influence, while the head is rendered in a minimal, sharp, and bone-like manner, giving the figure a sense of alertness. Moore emphasized that sculpture should invite viewers to experience a sense of touch, even if only as an illusion, encouraging a physical and emotional connection with the work.

Moore’s methodical working sequence complemented this tactile inspiration. It involved beginning with a small-scale maquette, then an intermediate working model—such as the present piece—and occasionally culminated in full-scale monumental bronzes. This graduated approach allowed him to refine his forms thoughtfully, balancing abstraction and human presence at each stage. Notably, five large-scale versions of Reclining Figure: Hand are held in prestigious public institutions around the world—including the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, the City of Hamburg, the Iwaki Ho-Am Art Museum in Seoul, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City—underscoring the international significance of Moore’s work.

Between 1974 and 1980, Moore produced several significant iterations of the reclining female form, including Reclining Figure: Hand, Reclining Figure: Angles, Reclining Figure: Prop, Reclining Figure: Cut, and Draped Reclining Figure. While many of these late works were still cast at large scale and intended for public display, they reflect a clear evolution in Moore’s approach. Earlier reclining figures often emphasized robust, figurative forms with clear anatomical references and a commanding physical presence. In contrast, Moore’s later models distill the figure into more abstracted, elemental shapes—frequently fragmenting or omitting limbs—to create ambiguous, universal forms. Working Model for Reclining Figure: Hand dates from this mature phase, offering an intimate yet powerful expression of human presence. As Alan Bowness observed, Moore’s late works reveal “a certain sense of consolidation—the drawing together of the threads of a long and varied career” (Alan Bowness, ibid.). Here, formal refinement and emotional depth coexist with a monumental spirit.

Despite their abstracted forms, Moore’s reclining figures convey a profound and evocative human presence. In Reclining Figure: Hand, this archetypal quality is particularly emphasized by the treatment of the hand—rendered as claw-like with three incised parallel lines or omitted altogether—suggesting both the physical and symbolic essence of the human form rather than a literal representation.

Moore’s reclining figures draw from a rich lineage of ancient and classical sculpture One of his most formative influences was the Toltec-Maya Chacmool (see fig. 1), a pre-Columbian figure Moore first encountered as a plaster cast at the Trocadéro Museum in Paris in 1922. Struck by its distinctive posture—“not lying on its side but on its back with its head twisted round”—Moore saw in the Chacmool a compelling model for exploring spatial tension, psychological presence, and the expressive possibilities of the reclining pose (Henry Moore quoted in Alan Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 54). He would return to this motif throughout his life, continually reinterpreting it in forms that feel both ancient and modern.

Equally, the reclining figures of Michelangelo’s Night and Dawn (see fig. 2) offered models of expressive force and monumental grace, while the Parthenon marbles—particularly the figures of Dionysus (see fig. 3) and Ilissus—provided Moore with an idealized vocabulary of rhythm, repose, and sculptural balance. These historic references, drawn from both ancient Mesoamerican and classical European traditions, were never directly copied but absorbed into his personal visual language.This deep engagement with historic archetypes shaped the evolution of his sculptural practice and lent his reclining figures their unique ability to feel at once rooted in the past and radically modern.

Working Model for Reclining Figure: Hand draws on a lifetime of engagement with natural forms and historical archetypes; it embodies his belief in sculpture’s transcendent qualities —anchored in the human form, yet abstracted into something universal. With its interplay of mass, space, and movement, the work reflects the evolution of Moore’s own practice and his lasting influence on the language of modern sculpture.