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Lot Essay
Henry Moore conceived the theme of the Family Group for a public commission related to the building of new towns and schools in Britain before the Second World War. It was not until 1944, however, at the height of the conflict, that funding for the project seemed likely to become available. Moore modeled in terracotta the initial series of eight Family Groups. The end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, prompted him to create six more models; in 1947 he enlarged three of these terracottas, including the one pertaining to the present sculpture, to produce the first bronze editions.
The Family Group sculptures celebrate the nation’s return to peacetime well-being and the pleasures of family life. They express a renewed emphasis on fundamental humanist values, while providing an aesthetic model for community spirit and co-operation, with the promise of progressive social services for all. These sculptures rejoice not only in the birth of a child—Moore’s daughter Mary, his only offspring, was born in 1946—but in the creation of new young families as well. After a half-decade of wartime casualties and a low birth rate, to once again become fruitful and multiply was a crucial requirement for the economic and social revival of Britain during the post-war era.
When Moore chose to enlarge two of the Family Group maquettes to life-size for installation at schools in Stevenage (1947) and Harlow (1955), he opted for the iconic simplicity of a triadic configuration (Lund Humphries, nos. 269 and 365). The four-figure groups, however, outnumber the three-member families almost two to one among the terracotta models. The combination of both parents plus two children, one of each sex, was capable of generating more varied arrangements, with increased potential for emotional expression.
"This Family Group [the present sculpture] is rather far removed from the others in its formal aspects,” Will Grohmann wrote. “The man's chest is an open hollow; the woman's right breast is negatively modeled, the left positively; the legs are as rigid as the string-boards of a church pew. The boy standing between his father's knees is statuesquely simplified, the child sitting on his mother's lap is reaching with his left hand for her open breast, but the hand is lost in the bulk of the mother's body. The expression of the group is archaic, mute; the human relationship between the four beings is expressed only through the convergent attitude of the figures and through the alternations of solid shapes and hollows. The woman's hollow is fruitfulness, the man's is spirit” (op. cit., 1960, p. 142).
The Family Group sculptures celebrate the nation’s return to peacetime well-being and the pleasures of family life. They express a renewed emphasis on fundamental humanist values, while providing an aesthetic model for community spirit and co-operation, with the promise of progressive social services for all. These sculptures rejoice not only in the birth of a child—Moore’s daughter Mary, his only offspring, was born in 1946—but in the creation of new young families as well. After a half-decade of wartime casualties and a low birth rate, to once again become fruitful and multiply was a crucial requirement for the economic and social revival of Britain during the post-war era.
When Moore chose to enlarge two of the Family Group maquettes to life-size for installation at schools in Stevenage (1947) and Harlow (1955), he opted for the iconic simplicity of a triadic configuration (Lund Humphries, nos. 269 and 365). The four-figure groups, however, outnumber the three-member families almost two to one among the terracotta models. The combination of both parents plus two children, one of each sex, was capable of generating more varied arrangements, with increased potential for emotional expression.
"This Family Group [the present sculpture] is rather far removed from the others in its formal aspects,” Will Grohmann wrote. “The man's chest is an open hollow; the woman's right breast is negatively modeled, the left positively; the legs are as rigid as the string-boards of a church pew. The boy standing between his father's knees is statuesquely simplified, the child sitting on his mother's lap is reaching with his left hand for her open breast, but the hand is lost in the bulk of the mother's body. The expression of the group is archaic, mute; the human relationship between the four beings is expressed only through the convergent attitude of the figures and through the alternations of solid shapes and hollows. The woman's hollow is fruitfulness, the man's is spirit” (op. cit., 1960, p. 142).