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Lot Essay
Before the outbreak of war in 1939, Moore had begun to treat his drawings independently from his sculpture, giving him the ability to record ideas rapidly. When war arrived, material for sculpting became unobtainable and drawings were his major output for the war years. In 1941, Kenneth Clark, who owned this drawing, (in his capacity of chairman of the War Artists' Commission), recommended that Moore be made an Official War Artist. During this period Moore produced some of his most accomplished drawings, depictions of the London Underground known as his Shelter drawings and of workers in the mine his father worked in.
This work is a fine detailed drawing, focusing on Moore's attention to the main theme which occupied much of his work, the mother and child and family groups. At this time Moore was pre-occupied with resolving technical problems related to his upright figure sculptures and how hollowed-out forms might become self-supporting without becoming unstable. The forms are a progression from the strings he used for articulating figures, and anticipates the sculptural solution that Moore found ten years later.
Henry Moore usually used pencil and ink, with chalk and wash to emphasise the modelling, for which his preferred colour was green. In this case he exploited a technique of using wax and coloured crayons as a resist. The shiny surface on the paper creating a barrier for the watercolour applied afterwards, gave added texture to the surface. In addition he used what he called 'sectional lines' in some aspects of the drawing, the child in particular. Invented by Moore in the 1920s and used frequently in his drawings of the 1940s, the lines cross-sect the figures to emphasise the three-dimensional sculptural forms.
This work is a fine detailed drawing, focusing on Moore's attention to the main theme which occupied much of his work, the mother and child and family groups. At this time Moore was pre-occupied with resolving technical problems related to his upright figure sculptures and how hollowed-out forms might become self-supporting without becoming unstable. The forms are a progression from the strings he used for articulating figures, and anticipates the sculptural solution that Moore found ten years later.
Henry Moore usually used pencil and ink, with chalk and wash to emphasise the modelling, for which his preferred colour was green. In this case he exploited a technique of using wax and coloured crayons as a resist. The shiny surface on the paper creating a barrier for the watercolour applied afterwards, gave added texture to the surface. In addition he used what he called 'sectional lines' in some aspects of the drawing, the child in particular. Invented by Moore in the 1920s and used frequently in his drawings of the 1940s, the lines cross-sect the figures to emphasise the three-dimensional sculptural forms.