• Abstract and Figures
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HOGLANDS Henry Moore’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 art 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.

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