Henry Moore OM, CH

Pink and Green Sleepers

1941

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In Tate Britain

Henry Moore: Henry Moore and Tate

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Artist: Henry Moore OM, CH 1898–1986
Medium: Graphite, ink, gouache and wax on paper
Dimensions: Support: 381 × 559 mm
frame: 656 × 818x 35 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946
Reference: N05713

Display caption

One critic, writing in 1943, described
the Shelter Drawings in terms of natural phenomena. He compared the strange colours, scratchy lines and pitted surfaces to 'lichen of grey rock, the coloured texture of weather-worn stone, the fiery black and red of igneous formations of burning coal'.

Such associations between Moore's shelterers and nature supported a general propaganda message that within the British people lived an indomitable,
almost elemental force which would prevail whatever the threat.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05713 PINK AND GREEN SLEEPERS 1941

Inscr. ‘Moore 41’ b.r.
Pen, wash and gouache, 15×22 (38×55·5).
Presented by the War Artists' Advisory Committee 1946.
Exh: National War Pictures, National Gallery and Glasgow, 1945; British Council, Quelques Contemporains Anglais, Paris, 1945, and Nine Artists, Prague, 1946 (23); Arts Council, Tate Gallery, 1951 (143, repr. in colour, pl.7).
Lit: Neumann, 1959, pp.55–6 and 60–5, repr. pl.39.
Repr: Grigson, 1943, pl.29 (in colour); Sweeney, 1946, p.67 (in colour); Read and Sylvester, I, 1957, p.234.

See N05706. A less finished version, 15×22 in., belongs to Dr Henry M. Roland (repr. Grohmann, 1960, pl.106), and a third even less finished version, 15 1/4×21 1/2 in., signed and dated 1941, was exhibited at the Tate Gallery, 1951 (142), and at Roland, Browse and Delbanco, May–June 1955 (25, repr.). The Shelter Sketch-Books contain a sketch for the composition as a whole and a detailed study of the left-hand head, as well as a number of similar drawings (repr. Editions Poetry London, 1944).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II