Henry Moore OM, CH

Animal Head 1951 is a sculpture of an animal’s head made in off-white plaster mounted on a rectangular wooden base spray-painted in satin black. Although it does not represent the head of a specific animal it is loosely reminiscent of a horse’s, cow’s or sheep’s head. The presence of holes that run through the plaster and its off-white surface colour give the impression that the head may represent a skull.

The head appears to be balanced on a relatively small area at the base of the neck and thus seems to be front-heavy (fig.1). From the neck, the back of the sculpture curves outwards and upwards to the top of the head, which projects forwards horizontally before dipping to a snout. At the front of the snout is a shallow recess that may denote a nostril (fig.2). Below the snout is a deeper hollow with rounded edges denoting the mouth. The inside of the mouth has been coloured with a dark brown pigment to emphasise the sense of internal depth (fig.3). The thick lower jaw or mandible extends back towards the neck in parallel with the base.

From the back of the head can be seen two holes of uneven size that run all the way through the plaster (fig.4). While the hole that can be seen on the right side of the head resembles an eye socket (see fig.1), the hole that penetrates the left side does not. Instead, on the left side an eye socket is suggested by another deep rounded recess that is positioned half-way down the length of the head (fig.5). These asymmetrical features reveal that Moore was not concerned with representing a real animal head with anatomical accuracy.