Henry Moore's Sheep Sketchbook

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The sheep came up close to the window and so Henry Moore started sketching them. Initially, he only viewed them as balls of wool but as he started to pay more attention to their way of life, the way they moved, the shape of their bodies beneath the fleece, he got more understanding of them. They had strong human/biblical associations – the sight of an ewe with a lamb evoked strong mother and child themes (large form sheltering small form) which has been important to Henry Moore throughout his artwork. The work began as a 14 centimetres (5.5in) maquette made in plaster in 1969, [4] and then cast in bronze. [5] An example of the bronze is exhibited by the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green.

London, Marlborough Fine Arts, Art in Britain 1930-1940 centred around Axis Circle Unit One, March-April 1965, no 83 (illustrated in the catalogue)Andrew Causey, ‘Henry Moore and the Uncanny’, in Henry Moore: Critical Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), p. 82–90. Jane Wess, ‘The history of surface mathematical models’, in Intersections: Henry Moore and Stringed Surfaces (London: The Royal Society, 2012), p. 7–8. Earlier figures are pierced in a conventional manner, in which bent limbs separate from and rejoin the body. The later, more abstract figures are often penetrated by spaces directly through the body, by which means Moore explores and alternates concave and convex shapes. These more extreme piercings developed in parallel with Barbara Hepworth's sculptures. [52] Hepworth first pierced a torso after misreading a review of one of Henry Moore's early shows. [ citation needed] The plaster Reclining Figure: Festival (1951) in the Tate, is characteristic of Moore's later sculptures: an abstract female figure intercut with voids. As with much of the post-War work, there are several bronze casts of this sculpture. [ citation needed] When Moore's niece asked why his sculptures had such simple titles, he replied, Henry Moore’s fascination with the countryside and wildlife has contributed to the notion that he has strong roots in British art traditions, but his gently hopeful, redemptive perspective of mankind has also won him international acclaim. Moore’s technique was founded on direct cutting, and he discarded the modeling phase. The above Henry Moore biography gives us some insight into Henry Moore’s paintings and sculptures. Yet, there is always much more to discover about this English sculptor. Here are a few book recommendations to help you learn more about Henry Moore’s drawings and statues.

Henry Moore’s sculpture Reclining Woman (1930), exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada; Gbuchana at English Wikipedia , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore also produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper. He was interested in the ways it was feasible to detect consistencies between the mass of an item and the space surrounding it – possibly the way the area around the Bird Basket grabs it instead of the other way around. Even though we can see through the strings to the hard bulk of the sculpture’s body, the strings help to accentuate the space around the figure. Feldman, Anita; Woodward, Malcolm (2011). Henry Moore Plasters. London: Royal Academy of Arts. ISBN 978-1-907533-11-2. Moore became intrigued by the concept of poking holes in the formerly integrated shape of his sculptures, and toying with the juxtaposition of positive vs negative space. I was fascinated by the mathematical models … made to illustrate the difference of the form that is halfway between a square and a circle. One model had a square at one end with 20 holes along each side … Through these holes rings were threaded and lead [ sic] to a circle with the same number of holes at the other end. A plane interposed through the middle shows the form that is halfway between a square and a circle ₃