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Lot Essay
Celebrating a moment of parental embrace, Family Group ranks among Henry Moore’s most intimate, domestic depictions of the subject. Executed in 1948, the drawing illustrates a mother and father as they tenderly encircle their own child. The group’s strong three-dimensional aspect and the heavily marked depiction of masses betray the eye of a sculptor. Even though Moore executed a series of domestic drawings of his family in 1948, Family Group seems to have been executed with the idea of a sculpture in mind: the brick wall behind the group suggests an outdoor setting, while the base on which the family rests evokes a display plinth. Combining descriptive lines with atmospheric washes, Family Group presents a beautiful example of Moore’s distinctive drawing technique.
The idea of the ‘family group’ as a composition had originated in a commission Moore received in the early 1930s, when the artist was approached by Harry Morris, a progressive educational theorist. In those years, Morris was planning a new school building at Impington which would put his revolutionary ideas into practice. Having entrusted the architectural project to the Bauhaus’s Director, Walter Gropius, Morris asked Moore to provide a sculpture for the site: ‘from that time dates my idea of the family group as a subject for sculpture’, Moore later recalled (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 89). With the project, Morris was hoping to create a new type of school, conceived as the fulcrum of social interaction for the community, actively involving parents as much as their children. Moore’s sculpture, planned as a family group, would have publicly and visually conveyed the essence of Morris’s ideas. Despite Morris’s enthusiasm, however, the project was abandoned for lack of funding. In 1947 – a year before Moore executed Family Group – the idea was finally realised in a cast for the Barclay School in Stevenage.
Commenting on the Stevenage public commission of a family group, Moore later observed: ‘In the sculpture the child is shown in the arms of his parents, as though the two arms come together and a knot is tied by the child… this did not come into my mind at the time of doing it’ (H. Moore, quoted in D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture, with Comments by the Artist, London, 1981, p. 102). The same dynamic is illustrated in Family Group: at the centre of the circle created by the parents, the child becomes the fulcrum of their bodies, extended to meet around him. The persistence of this compositional element suggests that the idea of the child as a physical bond between parents had a particular resonance for the artist in those years. In 1947 the artist’s only daughter was born, an event all the more anticipated following an earlier tragic miscarriage. At the time Moore executed Family Group, he also produced a series of drawings and sculptures portraying his wife Irina and daughter Mary playing on a rocking chair. More composed, yet movingly vivid, Family Group integrated the male figure into the group, celebrating the happiness of a newly-created family and resonating strongly with the private life of the artist.
The idea of the ‘family group’ as a composition had originated in a commission Moore received in the early 1930s, when the artist was approached by Harry Morris, a progressive educational theorist. In those years, Morris was planning a new school building at Impington which would put his revolutionary ideas into practice. Having entrusted the architectural project to the Bauhaus’s Director, Walter Gropius, Morris asked Moore to provide a sculpture for the site: ‘from that time dates my idea of the family group as a subject for sculpture’, Moore later recalled (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 89). With the project, Morris was hoping to create a new type of school, conceived as the fulcrum of social interaction for the community, actively involving parents as much as their children. Moore’s sculpture, planned as a family group, would have publicly and visually conveyed the essence of Morris’s ideas. Despite Morris’s enthusiasm, however, the project was abandoned for lack of funding. In 1947 – a year before Moore executed Family Group – the idea was finally realised in a cast for the Barclay School in Stevenage.
Commenting on the Stevenage public commission of a family group, Moore later observed: ‘In the sculpture the child is shown in the arms of his parents, as though the two arms come together and a knot is tied by the child… this did not come into my mind at the time of doing it’ (H. Moore, quoted in D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture, with Comments by the Artist, London, 1981, p. 102). The same dynamic is illustrated in Family Group: at the centre of the circle created by the parents, the child becomes the fulcrum of their bodies, extended to meet around him. The persistence of this compositional element suggests that the idea of the child as a physical bond between parents had a particular resonance for the artist in those years. In 1947 the artist’s only daughter was born, an event all the more anticipated following an earlier tragic miscarriage. At the time Moore executed Family Group, he also produced a series of drawings and sculptures portraying his wife Irina and daughter Mary playing on a rocking chair. More composed, yet movingly vivid, Family Group integrated the male figure into the group, celebrating the happiness of a newly-created family and resonating strongly with the private life of the artist.