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Lot Essay
Moore's Family Groups are his most social-minded sculptures. He conceived the idea for a public commission related to the building of new towns and schools in Britain before the Second World War. This theme took on additional significance after the war in celebrating a return to the peacetime virtues of general well-being and family life, while providing a model for community spirit and co-operation during post-war reconstruction and development. The Family Groups moreover carried the subliminal message that after a war-time toll of more than 450,000 deaths and five years of a low birth rate, the British people should once again be fruitful and multiply; the Family Groups rejoice not only in the birth of a child, but the creation of a new young family as well, a crucial development in the social revival of Britain during the post-war era.
"When Walter Gropius was working in England before the war," Moore recounted, "he was asked by Henry Morris, Director for Education in Cambridgeshire to design a large school at Impington, near Cambridge. It was meant to be different from other elementary schools because it was meant to put into practice lots of Henry Morris' ideas on education... Gropius asked me to do a piece of sculpture for the school... I suggested that a family group would be the right subject... Later the war came and I heard no more about until, about 1944, Henry Morris told me that he now thought he could get enough money together for the sculpture if I would still like to think of doing it. I said yes, because the idea right from the start had appealed to me and I began drawings in note book form of family groups. From these notebook drawings I made a number of small maquettes, a dozen or more" (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 273).
"I must have worked for nine months or so [from fall 1944 through spring 1945] on the Family Group themes and ideas," Moore continued, "but again, Henry Morris found it difficult to raise money for the sculpture, and also my maquettes were not liked by the local education authorities, and again nothing materialized. I carried out three of four of the six inch maquettes more fully into a slightly larger size for my own satisfaction [the present Family Group is an enlarged version of Lund Humphries, no. 239], and then I went on with other work" (quoted in ibid., p. 273).
The Family Group commission became a possibility again in 1947, in a different location, as Moore has recalled: "John Newsom, the Director of Education in Hertfordshire, a friend of Henry Morris, and having similar progressive ideas on education, told me of a large school being built by Herfordshire education authorities... Newsom knew of the projected Impington sculpture and now said, as that had fallen through, would I be prepared to do a piece of sculpture at their new school at Stevenage. I agreed, for here was the chance of carrying through one of the ideas on a large scale which I had wanted to do. I went to see the school and chose from one of my previous ideas the one which I had wanted most to carry out on a life-size scale [a three-member family: LH239 and the enlarged version, the present sculpture]" (ibid.).
The present Family Group, closely related to the maquette LH239, became the working model for the full-size bronze version that Moore installed in 1949 at the Barclay School in Stevenage (LH269), measuring 60 inches (150 cm.) in height. Moore favored a three-person group for the Stevenage commission partly because it reflected his own family make-up (his only child Mary was born in 1946), and that it focused most clearly on the essential three-way relationship between father, mother and child. The Family Groups embodied Moore's optimism for the post-war era; they became the best-known of his early sculptures, and helped to establish his reputation internationally.
"When Walter Gropius was working in England before the war," Moore recounted, "he was asked by Henry Morris, Director for Education in Cambridgeshire to design a large school at Impington, near Cambridge. It was meant to be different from other elementary schools because it was meant to put into practice lots of Henry Morris' ideas on education... Gropius asked me to do a piece of sculpture for the school... I suggested that a family group would be the right subject... Later the war came and I heard no more about until, about 1944, Henry Morris told me that he now thought he could get enough money together for the sculpture if I would still like to think of doing it. I said yes, because the idea right from the start had appealed to me and I began drawings in note book form of family groups. From these notebook drawings I made a number of small maquettes, a dozen or more" (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 273).
"I must have worked for nine months or so [from fall 1944 through spring 1945] on the Family Group themes and ideas," Moore continued, "but again, Henry Morris found it difficult to raise money for the sculpture, and also my maquettes were not liked by the local education authorities, and again nothing materialized. I carried out three of four of the six inch maquettes more fully into a slightly larger size for my own satisfaction [the present Family Group is an enlarged version of Lund Humphries, no. 239], and then I went on with other work" (quoted in ibid., p. 273).
The Family Group commission became a possibility again in 1947, in a different location, as Moore has recalled: "John Newsom, the Director of Education in Hertfordshire, a friend of Henry Morris, and having similar progressive ideas on education, told me of a large school being built by Herfordshire education authorities... Newsom knew of the projected Impington sculpture and now said, as that had fallen through, would I be prepared to do a piece of sculpture at their new school at Stevenage. I agreed, for here was the chance of carrying through one of the ideas on a large scale which I had wanted to do. I went to see the school and chose from one of my previous ideas the one which I had wanted most to carry out on a life-size scale [a three-member family: LH239 and the enlarged version, the present sculpture]" (ibid.).
The present Family Group, closely related to the maquette LH239, became the working model for the full-size bronze version that Moore installed in 1949 at the Barclay School in Stevenage (LH269), measuring 60 inches (150 cm.) in height. Moore favored a three-person group for the Stevenage commission partly because it reflected his own family make-up (his only child Mary was born in 1946), and that it focused most clearly on the essential three-way relationship between father, mother and child. The Family Groups embodied Moore's optimism for the post-war era; they became the best-known of his early sculptures, and helped to establish his reputation internationally.