Henry Moore Name _____________________________ Date ______________________________ Period ____________________________ admission to the Leeds School of Art. Some of the returning servicemen were eligible for grants for study. Moore was able to get such a grant. At the school Moore’s sculpture instructor was a man who had just come from the Royal College of Art. Moore was his only pupil. In a year’s time Moore had finished a two-year course and had received a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. It was exciting for Moore to be on his own in Lon- don. He enjoyed visiting the British Museum and Henry Moore, Reclining Figure-Clothed, bronze spent hours there studying the sculpture which had The sculpture of Henry Moore is closely related to been brought from other countries. He went to Paris natural forms. He found ways to use negative space for the first time in 1923 and saw some of the art of or volume with positive space or volume. He saw Cezanne. In 1925 he was awarded a scholarship for that a hole in a sculpture seemed to connect one side six months of travel in Italy and France. During to another. Much of his work is larger than life, and these early years Moore was influenced by two dif- meant to be placed outdoors in natural settings. ferent kinds of art. He liked the nobility of styles of the old masters. He was also drawn to the more Henry Moore was born on July 30, 1898 in the vil- primitive art of Egypt, the Greek sculpture from lage of Castleford in Yorkshire, England. It was a Cyclades, Sumerian Sculpture, and ancient Mexican coal mining town. His father was a miner who was stone sculpture. In Paris in 1925 he saw the Chac self-educated, and wanted all his children to go to Mool, a sculpture of a Mayan rain spirit in an inter- school. He believed that by getting an education esting reclining pose. The next year Moore made each child would have a better chance in life than the first of his reclining figures, a style for which he he’d had. He never allowed them to go into the became famous. mines with him. Henry Moore decided to be a sculptor when he was eleven years old. He had heard about Michelange- lo’s sculpture. He also liked stopping by an old Gothic church near his village to look at the sculp- ture it contained. At school he enjoyed his art clas- ses and was encouraged to pursue a career in art by his teacher, Alice Gostick. When Moore returned from serving in the army in World War I, Miss Gostick helped him apply for Chac Mool, Myan rain spirit 1 Short Lessons in Art History: Artist and Their Work, Phyllis Clausen Barker, Walch Publishing 2002 Moore’s work was shown in exhibition for the first also used holes, and sometimes it seems he created time in 1928. Thirty drawings were sold, along with around the hole itself, using positive space to create a few sculptures. The public was slow to appreciate a negative shape or space within the material. In his work. Even some of his fellow teachers at order to make thinner the Royal College of Art, where he now taught, shapes that would still threatened to quit unless Moore was dismissed. be strong, Moore used At about that time his contract was due to end, bronze in later years. and he accepted a position at the Chelsea School of Art in London. He was a teacher Drawing was always there on a part-time basis until World War II. important in Moore’s Like most artist, he had to have other employ- work. He sketched ide- ment for many years to earn a living while he as for sculptures, alt- worked on his own art. On days when he did hough he stopped short not teach, he worked in his studio. By the of drawing a three- 1930’s, he and his wife, Irina, owned a cottage dimensional picture. with a sculpture studio on a few acres of land He believed that draw- near Canterbury in Kingston. ing in too much detail would rob him of the excite- ment of actually creating the sculpture itself. Some Moore continued to work in the style he’d devel- of his best-known drawings were done during the oped and gradually won acceptance by the art world bombing raids on London during World War II. The and the public. In the years following World War II, city was being bombed night after night. People be- he had become one of the world’s leading sculptors. gan taking blankets and going to the subway tun- It was his aim to combine the abstract elements with nels, where they slept on the platforms. The subway the human elements of a figure. Most of his sculp- became giant air raid shelters. Moore visited the ture uses the female figure. Other familiar themes tunnels during the nights and spent a year develop- are mother and child, reclining figures, and family ing drawings from his sketches of the sleeping groups of mother, father and child. He strived for an forms. At that time sculpture materials were diffi- organic form which has warmth and a strong rela- cult for him to get, and drawing became a substitute tion to its material. Early in his career he stressed for sculpture. He also visited the coal mines where “truth to material,” by which he meant carving di- his father had worked and drew the miners. rectly on the material, and using material which was appropriate for the ideas used. Usually an artist has a particular size in which he His sculpture is in the round or she likes to work. A painter may paint anything (meant to be seen from all from a few inches to many feet in height and sides); is has a different ap- width. Sculptors also like to work within a partic- pearance form each point of ular scale. Moore liked a scale just over life size. view. He wanted it to be cre- Since he wanted his work to be placed and seen ated “from pressure from outdoors, he tried to fit a sculpture to an open within.” Sometimes faces are space. natural; often, however, only A sculptor may do his or her own bronze casting an eye, or nose, or other fea- of pieces that are small enough to be managed. ture is suggested. He used Larger sculptures are taken to foundries and often stone, wood, and bronze. He cast in pieces, which are then assembled. Freshly 2 Short Lessons in Art History: Artist and Their Work, Phyllis Clausen Barker, Walch Publishing 2002 made, they are bright and shiny. As a bronze is ex- ent; Moore’s Madonna seems to look into the future posed to air and moisture, the color usually turns of the Child she holds. shades of green. An artist may use chemicals on the surface to control the color and get reds, black, or Other family themes followed, notably Family various greens as the metal weathers. Group in 1944. Moore’s mother died in 1944; his only child, a To get ideas for his sculpture, Moore collected daughter, rocks, bones, shells, driftwood, and found objects, Mary, was which he kept in a small studio. He also kept born, in 1946. sketchbooks that he filled with drawings, doodles, The family and sketches. He worked out his ideas in small themes may models, or maquettes, perhaps no larger than his have been re- hand, using clay or plaster. He imagined the model lated to in the actual size it would be when it was made in Moore’s per- the final size. When a sculpture was commissioned, sonal feelings Moore sometimes reached an agreement to make at that time more than one casting. In this way, several sculp- about his own tures were made of the same design, and could be family. kept by the artist, sold, or given away. In 1951 Moore Warrior with Shield, 1953-1954, The Madonna and Child for the Church of St Mat- visited Greece. Bronze thew in North- This trip was followed by two sculptures which ampton was done seem to have been influenced by what he saw there. in 1943. Before Fallen Warrior and Warrior with Shield are two of Moore decided his rare uses of mail figures other than in his family to take the com- groups. King and Queen was also made at about this mission, he made time. He began Warrior with Shield after finding a sketches and pebble on the beach. It reminded him of a stump of small models of a leg. He thought of battle sense, and began work- ideas for the ing on ideas. It was the first male figure he did as a work. He wanted single and separate figure. to create a work or nobility and grandeur, devoid of sentimentality. The Madonna is seated with the Child on her lap. Madonna and Child, 1943 Her face wears a sadness and dig- nity that reminds one of the expression of another Madonna’s face – that in the Michelangelo’s fa- mous Pieta. The sculpture styles are entirely differ- UNESCO Reclining Figure 1957-58 3 Short Lessons in Art History: Artist and Their Work, Phyllis Clausen Barker, Walch Publishing 2002 In 1957-1958 Moore was commissioned to make a He was proud of his working-class background, of sculpture for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. At his farm-laborer ancestors, and his coal miner fa- first he planned to make a reclining figure in ther.