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Lot Essay
Conceived in 1981, Maquette for Draped Reclining Mother and Baby combines two of Moore’s favorite themes: the Reclining Figure and the Mother and Child. Moore had an absolute fascination with both, employing them throughout his career through endless experimentation and innovation. For Moore, the enduring appeal of the reclining figure lay in the infinite formal and spatial possibilities. This symbiotic relationship between form and space was one of Moore’s central sculptural innovations, offering unlimited views through and around the sculpture. Moore stressed the importance of such a relationship, stating, “You can’t understand space without being able to understand form and to understand form you must be able to understand space” (quoted in C. Lichtenstern, Henry Moore, Work-Theory-Impact, London, 2008, p. 105). This can be seen to great effect in the present work, in which Moore plays with the notions of solid and void, creating a sinuous and organic form.
There is something innately organic about Moore’s Maquette for Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, in which the mother protects her baby within the concave form of her body, her right arm wrapping around the child for added protection. Alan Bowness reflects on the artist’s mature period: “Moore’s sculptures have indeed become increasingly concerned with human relationships. It has always been a major preoccupation, from the earliest Mother and Child sculpture, but it seems to me that what we are offered in the late works is a paradigm of the human relationship, with the figures groping, touching, embracing, coupling, even merging with each other” (Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1964-1973, London, 1977, vol. 4, p. 17).
This heightened sense of parental love in Moore’s late work coincides with the birth of his first grandchild in 1977. From this point onwards, his Mother and Child works found a renewed sense of power and intimacy as he simplified his forms, emphasizing the expression of the spirit of his figures. Although heightened by personal experiences, the Mother and Child theme was a constant source of inspiration throughout the artist’s career. Moore explained, “From very early on I had an obsession with the Mother and Child theme. It has been a universal theme from the beginning of time. Some of the earliest sculptures we’ve found from the Neolithic Age are of a mother and child. I discovered when drawing I could turn every little scribble, blot or smudge into a Mother and Child” (quoted in H. Moore and J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 61).
There is something innately organic about Moore’s Maquette for Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, in which the mother protects her baby within the concave form of her body, her right arm wrapping around the child for added protection. Alan Bowness reflects on the artist’s mature period: “Moore’s sculptures have indeed become increasingly concerned with human relationships. It has always been a major preoccupation, from the earliest Mother and Child sculpture, but it seems to me that what we are offered in the late works is a paradigm of the human relationship, with the figures groping, touching, embracing, coupling, even merging with each other” (Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1964-1973, London, 1977, vol. 4, p. 17).
This heightened sense of parental love in Moore’s late work coincides with the birth of his first grandchild in 1977. From this point onwards, his Mother and Child works found a renewed sense of power and intimacy as he simplified his forms, emphasizing the expression of the spirit of his figures. Although heightened by personal experiences, the Mother and Child theme was a constant source of inspiration throughout the artist’s career. Moore explained, “From very early on I had an obsession with the Mother and Child theme. It has been a universal theme from the beginning of time. Some of the earliest sculptures we’ve found from the Neolithic Age are of a mother and child. I discovered when drawing I could turn every little scribble, blot or smudge into a Mother and Child” (quoted in H. Moore and J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 61).