HENRY MOORE | Madonna and Child

Jeffrey Loria, New York & Florida (acquired in 1968)
Gallery Moos, Ltd., Toronto
Acquired from the above in 1968

David Sylvester, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1921-48, vol. 1, London, 1988, no. 223, illustration of the terracotta version p. 138 

The work exhibits a green patina with golden highlights. There is some surface dirt in deeper crevices and some rubbing to the extremities. The sculpture would benefit from a light cleaning. The work is in overall good condition.
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Madonna and Child is an important study for one of Moore’s most significant public commissions and wonderfully captures the artist’s adept rendering of the close maternal relationship that he would later go on to develop further with the family group theme. Initially approached in 1943 by the Reverend Walter Hussey for a commission for St. Matthew’s Parish Church in Northampton, Moore was at first skeptical, unsure how best to differentiate the theme of a mother and child from that of the Madonna and Child, and mindful of the long inherited tradition that the motif held within Western art and iconography. "When I was first asked to carve a Madonna and Child for St. Matthew’s, although I was very interested I wasn’t sure whether I could do it, or whether I even wanted to… I felt it was not a commission straightaway and light-heartedly to agree to undertake, and I could only promise to make notebook drawings from which I would do small clay models, and only then should I be able to say whether I could produce something which would be satisfactory as sculpture and also satisfy my idea of the Madonna and Child as well…" (Henry Moore quoted in Church of St. Matthew’s, Northampton, 1893-1943, St. Matthew’s Church, Northampton, 1943).

After witnessing the delicacy of Moore’s shelter drawings, which had been on display at the National Gallery the previous year, Hussey was convinced that Moore was the man for the job, and the artist soon set to work creating preparatory sketches and small clay models for the final piece. As Moore later recalled, "I had not done any sculpture for nearly two years, through doing the shelter drawings and the coal mine drawings, I wanted to get back to sculpture, and yet I hadn’t got the themes in mind. So this was a way of beginning. But I still felt unsure of being able to do it, and I said to him, 'If you will give me two or three months, I’ll do some little ideas, some little maquettes. And if my friends such as Herbert Read and Kenneth Clark think that what I produce is all right, then I’ll consider it.' And I did this. And we had them all out on the mantelpiece at the Upper Terrace house of Kenneth Clark’s" (quoted in The Donald Carroll Interviews, London, 1973, Henry Moore Foundation Archive). It was from such a model that the present work was later cast, and although slight variations appear between the early maquette and the later work in Hornton stone, the lyrical naturalism and steadfastness remain constant.

Providing the artist with his first opportunity to carve in stone since the outbreak of war, the commission provided a physical outlet for many of the pent-up ideas that Moore had developed and nurtured throughout his series of shelter drawings. Capturing an everyday take on the mother and child theme, Moore developed the bulky, realized physicality of the mother figure, with angular, exposed knees, closely clutching the infant in her arms as both a symbol of hope and a means of protection in the otherwise fragile times.



This work is recorded in the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation.