HOGLANDS ’s family home

Henry Moore and his wife Irina moved to Perry Green in 1940, after their London home was damaged during the Blitz. Henry and Irina were able to rent half of a former farmhouse, by the name of Hoglands, in the centre of the hamlet. The sale of a 1939 elmwood carving, Reclining Figure, to fellow artist Gordon Onslow Ford soon allowed them to buy the whole house.

The Moores remained at Hoglands for the rest of their lives. Moore acquired more land, piece by piece, and added more studios. Irina created a beautiful and vibrant garden; a perfect backdrop to her husband’s work. Hoglands was very much the centre of both family life and Henry Moore’s business.

In 2004 we were able to acquire Hoglands from Irina and Henry Moore’s daughter Mary and, after careful restoration, it was opened to visitors in 2007. The house now contains many artefacts, books and works of that were part of Henry and Irina Moore’s personal collection. These have been kindly loaned to the Foundation by the Moore family.

Unfortunately, Hoglands is not open to visitors in 2020.

SUMMER HOUSE Henry Moore’s drawing studio

This small studio was returned to the gardens in 2016. Henry Moore acquired this summer house in c.1951, siting it in the garden of Hoglands. It provided him with an informal space for drawing, connected to the outdoors and with plenty of natural light.

Originally mounted on a turntable, it could be rotated to change views and find the best conditions at different times of the day. The summer house has been packed away and wrapped for winter to protect the building and its contents. OVAL WITH POINTS 1968-70 (LH 596)

Casting a dramatic silhouette and bulging with energy, this sculpture is one of Moore’s most iconic works and one of the most successful abstract forms that he explored at the end of the 1960s. At this time, Moore was at the height of his international fame, and a surge of public commissions challenged him to become increasingly inventive in his approach.

His work from this period is characterised by dynamic forms and a playful approach to mass and void. Other casts of Oval With Points are sited in Hong Kong, America, Germany and Saudi Arabia. DRAPED RECLINING FIGURE 1952-53 (LH 336)

Moore’s lifelong fascination with the reclining figure began in the 1920s when he first encountered the Mesoamerican Chacmool figure.

This sculpture, originally commissioned for the Time Life building on New Bond Street, is his first to feature realistic drapery. The figure was initially made in plaster, which Moore built up to create a richly textured surface evoking ripples, creases and folds.

TWO PIECE RECLINING FIGURE: CUT 1979-81 (LH 758)

Moore began experimenting with break- ing his reclining figures into two and three parts as early as 1934. By 1959, he was creating monumental figures composed of two or three parts and the negative spaces between them. By breaking down the boundaries of the human form he aimed to unite the body and landscape.

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut exists in four scales: from the original maquette at just 20cm in length to this 5m long version completed when Moore was 83. THREE PIECE SCULPTURE: VERTEBRAE 1968-69 (LH 580)

It is likely that this sculpture was inspired by a bone or piece of flint in Moore’s maquette studio. Like vertebrae, the forms share the same basic shape but are not identical. Their arrangement too recalls a spine; the forms interlock in a horizontal, rhythmic, row. The two end pieces mirror each other, their angular uprights leaning towards the connecting piece between them.

Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae was one of the last large works made using an internal wooden armature, which was draped in scrim (a bandage-like fabric) and then covered with successive layers of wet plaster.

KNIFE EDGE TWO PIECE 1962-65 (LH 516)

This work shows Moore’s re-engagement with abstraction during the 1960s. The work comprises two upright forms, set parallel to each other on a bronze base. As you move around the sculpture, the view changes dramatically. From the longest edge, the viewer is confronted by wide, flat masses. End-on, the thinness of the two elements is revealed, the flat masses now reduced to narrow forms with razor-sharp edges which stretch upwards, slicing through the sky.

All three casts of Knife Edge Two Piece are on public display. One occupies a prominent position outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Moore donated the Westminster cast to the nation through the Contemporary Art Society, and chose the site himself. RECLINING MOTHER AND CHILD 1975-76 (LH 649)

Moore was a student when he made his first sketch of a mother and child in 1921- 22. He swiftly recognised the richness of the subject, both on a human and a formal level, and it became an artistic obsession that he explored throughout his life.

Reclining Mother and Child was made in 1975-76, when Moore was in his late seventies. The sculpture combines two of his dominant themes: the reclining figure and the mother and child. Although several examples of this combination exist in Moore’s drawings, he very rarely conflated them in sculpture, preferring to treat them as separate subjects.

RECLINING FIGURE: ANGLES 1979 (LH 675)

Like many of Moore’s late works, Reclining Figure: Angles is characterised by a sense of confidence and consolidation. The work pulls together diverse interests from his long career, and combines them with a distinctive twist typical of works from this period.

The figure’s pose has echoes of the Mesoamerican chacmool sculptures that sparked Moore’s interest in the reclining figure. Like the chacmool, the figure reclines on its back, supported on its elbows with its knees raised and head turned away from the body.

References to classical sculpture are also apparent in the naturalism of the figure and the drapery covering her lower portion. In the early part of his career, Moore rejected classical sculpture but following his first visit to Greece in 1951 he began incorporating drapery in his sculpture. THE ARCH 1963/69 (LH 503b)

The Arch is one of the most dramatic examples of Moore’s sculpture in the open air. Enlarged from a maquette only a few inches high, the original inspiration came from a fragment of bone.

Standing at over six metres high, The Arch could be described as the culmination of Moore’s thoughts on the body as architecture. Since a visit to Stonehenge in 1921, Moore had dreamt of making sculpture which you could almost inhabit. He was aware of the relationship between The Arch and the triumphal arches of past architecture, and naturally occurring structures such as sea arches and caves.

The first cast of The Arch was made in fibreglass, for installation on the roof of the Forte de Belvedere in Florence during Moore’s celebrated 1972 exhibition. In 1980, Moore donated a large travertine marble version to Kensington Gardens in London. LARGE UPRIGHT INTERNAL/EXTERNAL FORM 1953-54, CAST 1981-82 (LH 297a)

Moore repeatedly explored the theme of internal/external forms, declaring it one of his favourite subjects. It provided the perfect opportunity to investigate sculptural relationships, generating visual excitement by presenting one form through another. It was the natural development of Moore’s early experiments with piercing holes in his sculpture.

At over 7m tall, this work soars over the viewer appearing simultaneously natural and alien. It recalls the slightly sinister air of Moore’s earlier ‘Helmet Head’ works, inspired by the armour at the Wallace Collection. Unlike the ‘Helmet Heads’, however, Moore allowed this work to develop in a decidedly organic direction, emphasising the procreative connotations of the internal/external theme. LARGE RECLINING FIGURE 1984 (LH 192b)

Large Reclining Figure is the product of Moore’s fourth and final collaboration with the architect I. M. Pei. Together, Moore and Pei selected a 1938 Reclining Figure (LH 192) – a 33 cm sculpture - as an idea suitable for enlargement and installation at one of Pei’s most ambitious projects - the 56 storey Singapore home of the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation.

Work on the enlargement began in 1983. Initially, Moore’s assistants made a full-size model in polystyrene (now destroyed), which was then refined before being cast in bronze at the Morris Singer Foundry in Basingstoke. At over 9 m long and weighing 4 tons, the final work is Moore’s largest to be cast in bronze. Only two bronze casts were made; the one destined for Singapore was sent by sea in 1984, and the second is sited here at Moore’s former home.

SHEEP PIECE 1971-72 (LH 627)

Moore’s maquette studio overlooked a field where a local farmer grazed his sheep. In 1972, Moore began drawing the sheep from a small desk in front of the window. He said, ‘…I went on drawing, because the lambing season had begun, and there in front of me was the mother- and-child theme.’ Moore attributed his interest in the mother and child theme to the unending sculptural possibilities in the relationship between two forms, one large and one small. In Sheep Piece the two forms draw towards one another, gently touching, but their forms are ambiguous, encouraging a more fluid interpretation of their relationship.

When Moore sited the work in the field, within sight of his maquette studio, he was delighted by the way the sheep and lambs interacted with the sculpture, con- gregating around its monumental forms in search of shade. TORSO WITH POINT 1967 (LH 570)

Moore’s comment on his tendency to ‘Humanise everything, to relate mountains to people, tree trunks to the human body’ is powerfully evoked in this work. The natural, twisted formation of a tree trunk here takes on the appearance of a human torso. Moore was fascinated by the trees that grew around his house and studios. Shortly after this work was made, he made a series of tree drawings.

WOMAN 1957-58, CAST 1960 (LH 439)

Woman, with her exaggerated roundness and fullness of form, can be seen as an inventive variation on another of Moore’s great obsessions: the mother and child. In many works he explored the sculptural relationship between two forms, one small and one large, but he was also fascinated by the theme on a human level, and how it had inspired some of the earliest known sculptures. Here, he presents a mother-to-be, her life-giving potential on display in the form of a rounded belly projecting from an otherwise concave torso.

GOSLAR WARRIOR 1973-74 (LH 641)

Goslar Warrior is the last of three large- scale warriors that Moore made during his career. Although they were made over a twenty-year period, the works could be read as a narrative sequence. The earliest, Warrior with Shield 1953- 54, depicts a wounded soldier, unable to stand but undefeated, his shield raised as if to deflect an impending blow. In the second work, Falling Warrior 1956-57, the subject is defeated and falling, caught in the dramatic moment before his body hits the earth. In Goslar Warrior, the figure is fallen, his enormous shield uselessly out-of-reach at his feet. In a final act of defiance, his head cranes forward, as if straining to see the face of his aggressor. DOUBLE OVAL 1966 (LH 560)

During the 1960s, Moore produced a series of increasingly abstract and monumental sculptures in which he explored a variety of new ideas. Works from this period include multi-part sculptures with forms that repeat or interlock, and so-called ‘knife edge’ works that incorporate thin, flat forms with sharp edges. In Double Oval, Moore combines and develops these interests to create a work of striking originality.

The inspiration behind Double Oval is not documented, but it has been suggested that the idea came from a pair of scissors half submerged in a bowl of plaster. Although this interpretation may seem unusual, Moore did incorporate seemingly mundane everyday objects in other works. His post-war textile designs, for example, feature safety pins, piano keys and clock hands, and his 1955 series of wall reliefs include the impressions of bolts, screws and files. THREE PIECE RECLINING FIGURE: DRAPED 1975 (LH 655)

The three elements of this late, mon- umental, reclining figure incorporate smooth and curvaceous passages which are sharply cut into stump-like forms. The largest part, a rising chest and neck, juxtaposes one amputated arm with a heavily bowed and bulbous counterpart which merges with the torso. The torso juts up and outwards towards the centre of the composition before being bluntly severed. This treatment is echoed in the head, resulting in a blank facial plane. The verticality of this element contrasts with the horizontal arched ‘skirt’ of the figure, which shields a separate and more sinuous ‘leg-form’. The component parts are carefully spaced across the flat bronze base. 1948-49 (LH 269)

In 1947, Moore’s friend John Newson, then Director of Education for Hertfordshire, approached him with a proposal: a sculpture for Barclay School in Stevenage. In 1949 the commission for Family Group – Moore’s first life-sized sculpture to be cast in bronze - was approved. Moore agreed to make the sculpture at cost price (materials, casting and transport) on the proviso that he could make a small edition to sell. Cast in an edition of six, the original commission remains at Barclay School and the other casts are in our col- lection plus those of: Tate; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan; and Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena.

UPRIGHT MOTIVE NO.5 1955-56 (LH 383)

Moore worked with architects throughout his career: Michael Rosenauer, Charles Holden, Gordon Bunshaft and I.M. Pei among others. While he often considered landscape the optimum setting for his work, he nonetheless enjoyed the challenge of conceiving work for architectural settings. The upright motives combine these interests, recalling architectural columns and the organic growth of trees and stalagmites. The motives can also appear ambiguously figurative.

In 1954 Moore worked with architect Michael Rosenauer on a design for the English Electric Company Headquarters in London. He produced eight upright motive maquettes, which he conceived as integral parts of the building. The project was never realised but the maquettes became the impetus for Moore’s later series of large upright motives, numbered one to nine, cast between 1955 and 1979. SEATED WOMAN 1958-59, CST 1975 (LH 440)

From the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, the solitary, seated female figure became a central theme in Moore’s work. The subject was not new to him; in the 1920s and 1930s he developed his characteristic treatment of monumental women in a number of drawings and carvings, in which figures sit solidly on simple geometric blocks. Moore’s renewed interest in the theme can be traced to a commission for the new headquarters of UNESCO in Paris. Initially, Moore thought a seated figure might be suitable and he made a number of maquettes testing out various poses. While the final work for UNESCO was a large reclining figure (LH 416), his maquettes formed the basis for later works such as Draped Seated Woman 1957-58. Moore conceived Seated Woman in the years immediately following the Paris commission although it was not enlarged and cast in bronze until 1975.

SQUARE FORM WITH CUT 1969 (LH 598)

Square Form with Cut was realised in three vastly different scales. The original maquette, just 20 cm high, was produced in a bronze edition of 9+1. In 1971, Moore completed Large Square Form With Cut, a towering creation in pale marble, over 5 m tall and weighing 180 tonnes. In between the two, Moore made a version of intermediate size, which he produced in three different materials: fibreglass, black marble and concrete. The concrete version in our collection is the last work Moore made in this material, and one of around thirty concrete sculptures he made in his lifetime. Explaining his initial interest in the material in the 1920s, he said: ‘At the time reinforced concrete was the new material for architecture. As I have always been interested in materials, I thought I ought to learn about the use of concrete for sculpture in case I ever wanted to connect a piece of sculpture with a concrete building.’ HENRY MOORE ARCHIVE

The new home of the Henry Moore Archive was completed in 2016 and designed by Hugh Broughton Architects. The new building houses our extensive collection of archive material under one roof in a series of state-of-the-art, climate-controlled stores.

The Archive comprises over three quarters of a million publications, documents, images and recordings created and collected from the artist’s working life to the present day. It illuminates Moore’s creativity, passion and curiosity and documents his influence on 20th and 21st century art.

The Archive is currently closed to visitors and researchers, but we hope to reopen in 2021. In the meantime, you can search the collections via the online Archive catalogue.

LARGE FIGURE IN A SHELTER 1985-86 (LH 652c)

In the 1920s and 1930s Moore visited the armouries of the Wallace Collection and subsequently produced a series of works related to helmets. For Moore, armour was a powerful and exciting sculptural form, inextricably linked to human history and the human body, which aligned with his exploration of the dynamic between internal and external space and volume.

Large Figure in a Shelter – Moore’s last monumental sculpture - was developed directly from Helmet Head No. 6 (LH 651), created in 1975, the year the Spanish dictator Franco died. It is pertinent that one of the two casts of Large Figure in a Shelter resides in Guernica, in the Parque de los Pueblos de Europa.