Henry Moore OM, CH

Standing Woman is an early example of Moore’s interest in the female nude, a subject that would dominate his later work. The woman is depicted contrapposto, meaning that her weight is unevenly distributed; her right knee is bent causing her left leg to stand straight and her left hip to be raised slightly. Her right arm hangs down by her side while her left arm is wrapped behind her back and bent at the elbow so that the forearm points up towards her right shoulder. Her head is slightly turned to the left. When viewed from behind, the figure’s left hand appears to be clasping her (now damaged) hair. The visible chisel marks on the right side of her torso and underneath the breasts contrast with the figure’s legs and back, which have been smoothed. This suggests that the sculpture was either left unfinished or that Moore sought the appearance of a sculpture that was not quite completed, judged by conventional standards.

In the catalogue raisonné of Moore’s work, which was published in 1957 and thus in the artist’s lifetime, Standing Woman was dated 1924. Subsequent published literature repeated this information. However, on entering the Tate collection in 1994 its date of creation was revised to 1922. It is unclear why this date was changed and it has subsequently been corrected.

Moore was a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London from 1921 to 1924. When Moore carved Standing Woman it is likely that it was a personal project rather than a required piece of coursework for the RCA. Moore had arrived at the college as a mature student, aged twenty-three, having served in the British army during the First World War. When Moore began the course, academic teaching of sculpture focused almost entirely on figuration, and was concerned above all with the styles and techniques of ancient Greek and Roman statuary and Italian Renaissance art. Under the leadership of Professor Francis Derwent Wood (1871–1926), a member of the Royal Academy, students in the RCA sculpture department were taught how to copy classical sculptures by accurately modelling replicas in clay or plaster before using a pointing machine to create a stone copy.1 Students were required to copy historical sculptures, working from plaster casts from the college’s collection, or from originals housed in London’s museums. In this way they would gain training not only in traditional sculpting techniques but also in the styles and subjects of the art of the past.2 Moore made Head of the Virgin after Rosselli 1922–3 (fig.1), a copy of the fifteenth-century Italian artist’s Virgin and Child, housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, as a piece of coursework.3 Here he attempted to make the stone look like skin; the figure’s cheeks appear to be soft, her lips are plump and flesh-like while the folds of her delicate headscarf look as though they could move in a breeze. Although Head of the Virgin after Rosselli appears to have been made using a traditional pointing machine, Moore said he carved the work freehand, making fake ‘point’ marks on the surface of the marble so as to deceive his tutor.4 As Moore recalled in 1968, ‘no original carving was permitted’.5 Indeed, while Moore recognised the value of attending life-drawing classes, which enhanced his understanding of the three-dimensional figure, he quickly realised that the classical style and sculptural techniques that the RCA promoted were of little interest to him. In order to balance his own interests with the demands of his course Moore later recalled: