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Lot Essay
Rocking Chair No. 2, Henry Moore effortlessly captures a tender moment of pure joy between a mother and her child that has been played out over millennia, in the simplest game that re-enforces that purity, innocence and trust that a child places in their mother.
For Henry and Irina Moore, that moment of joy arrived after 17 years of marriage, with the birth of their daughter Mary, in 1946. Moore had been engrossed with the ‘mother and child’ and ‘family group’ subjects through the 1940s, and this culminated in 1950 with four sculptures in a new mother and child configuration, the Rocking Chairs. ‘The rocking chair sculptures were done for my daughter Mary’, Moore explained, ‘as toys which actually rock’ (H. Moore and J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 178). ‘She was in every sense a precious baby’, Roger Berthoud has written, ‘Henry was from the first an active and doting father, and played a full part in helping to look after his beloved daughter’ (R. Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, New York, 1987, p. 197). Mary was four when Moore created the Rocking Chairs for her, happily reminiscing about the time when his little girl was learning to walk.
Rocking Chair No. 1, Rocking Chair No. 2 and Rocking Chair No. 3 are each about 11-12 in. (28-30 cm.) high, the fourth, subtitled Miniature (based on No. 3), is just under half the size of the others. Within this small series, Rocking Chair No. 2 is the only edition which rests the child’s feet tenderly on its mother’s knee as opposed to being precariously held aloft. These sculptures are Moore's only kinetic works; he intended them to be handled and rocked, ‘I discovered while doing them’, Moore recalled, ‘that the speed of the rocking chair depended on the curvature of the base and the disposition of the weights and balances of the sculpture, so each of them rocks at a different speed’ (op. cit., 1968, p. 178). In Rocking Chair No. 2, Moore has excelled in creating not just a kinetic sculpture that captures the playful and loving rapport between a mother and child, he has also synthesised the physical attributes of the figures, and the chair to their simplest forms, creating a wonderful modernist sculpture, which balances and harmonises the two figures together. Moore liked to vary the patination on his sculpture, but in the case of this cast of Rocking Chair No. 2, he has chosen a very dark brown and even patina, almost creating a silhouette, further accentuating the viewers eye to the powerful simplicity of the form, through the bold separation of the solid with the void.
Rocking Chair No. 2, is a wonderful demonstration of Moore’s skill as a sculptor in creating something beautiful as well as functional. The sculpture’s importance is reinforced not only because of its place in the trajectory of Moore’s oeuvre, but also its relation to one of the most momentous occasions of his personal life. Grohmann has written: ‘[The Rocking Chairs] are enchanting impromptus, the offspring of a lighter muse. One is inclined to suppose that family life underwent a happy release of tension through his young daughter Mary, forgetting that at the same period the frightful 'Helmet' series came into being ... As with Mozart, tragedy is next door to comedy ... jubilation is all the more genuine when behind it stands the totality of life with all its unresolved conflicts’ (W. Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, pp. 142-143).
For Henry and Irina Moore, that moment of joy arrived after 17 years of marriage, with the birth of their daughter Mary, in 1946. Moore had been engrossed with the ‘mother and child’ and ‘family group’ subjects through the 1940s, and this culminated in 1950 with four sculptures in a new mother and child configuration, the Rocking Chairs. ‘The rocking chair sculptures were done for my daughter Mary’, Moore explained, ‘as toys which actually rock’ (H. Moore and J. Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 178). ‘She was in every sense a precious baby’, Roger Berthoud has written, ‘Henry was from the first an active and doting father, and played a full part in helping to look after his beloved daughter’ (R. Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, New York, 1987, p. 197). Mary was four when Moore created the Rocking Chairs for her, happily reminiscing about the time when his little girl was learning to walk.
Rocking Chair No. 1, Rocking Chair No. 2 and Rocking Chair No. 3 are each about 11-12 in. (28-30 cm.) high, the fourth, subtitled Miniature (based on No. 3), is just under half the size of the others. Within this small series, Rocking Chair No. 2 is the only edition which rests the child’s feet tenderly on its mother’s knee as opposed to being precariously held aloft. These sculptures are Moore's only kinetic works; he intended them to be handled and rocked, ‘I discovered while doing them’, Moore recalled, ‘that the speed of the rocking chair depended on the curvature of the base and the disposition of the weights and balances of the sculpture, so each of them rocks at a different speed’ (op. cit., 1968, p. 178). In Rocking Chair No. 2, Moore has excelled in creating not just a kinetic sculpture that captures the playful and loving rapport between a mother and child, he has also synthesised the physical attributes of the figures, and the chair to their simplest forms, creating a wonderful modernist sculpture, which balances and harmonises the two figures together. Moore liked to vary the patination on his sculpture, but in the case of this cast of Rocking Chair No. 2, he has chosen a very dark brown and even patina, almost creating a silhouette, further accentuating the viewers eye to the powerful simplicity of the form, through the bold separation of the solid with the void.
Rocking Chair No. 2, is a wonderful demonstration of Moore’s skill as a sculptor in creating something beautiful as well as functional. The sculpture’s importance is reinforced not only because of its place in the trajectory of Moore’s oeuvre, but also its relation to one of the most momentous occasions of his personal life. Grohmann has written: ‘[The Rocking Chairs] are enchanting impromptus, the offspring of a lighter muse. One is inclined to suppose that family life underwent a happy release of tension through his young daughter Mary, forgetting that at the same period the frightful 'Helmet' series came into being ... As with Mozart, tragedy is next door to comedy ... jubilation is all the more genuine when behind it stands the totality of life with all its unresolved conflicts’ (W. Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, pp. 142-143).