Henry Moore OM, CH

Tube Shelter Perspective

1941

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Not on display

Artist: Henry Moore OM, CH 1898–1986
Medium: Graphite, ink, wax and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 483 × 438 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946
Reference: N05709

Display caption

This picture was exhibited at the National Gallery in 1941. It was described in the catalogue as 'a terrifying vista of recumbent shapes, pale as all underground life tends
to be pale; regimented, as only fear can regiment; helpless yet tense, safe yet listening, uncouth, uprooted, waiting
in the tunnel for the dawn to release them. This is not the descriptive journalism of art.
It is imaginative poetry of a high order.'

Gallery label, September 2002

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Catalogue entry

N05709 TUBE SHELTER PERSPECTIVE 1941

Not inscribed.
Pen, chalk, watercolour and gouache, 19×17 1/4 (48×43·5).
Presented by the War Artists' Advisory Committee 1946.
Exh: National War Pictures, National Gallery, 1941–2 and 1945; British Council, Quelques Contemporains Anglais, Paris, 1945, and Nine Artists, Prague, 1946 (24).
Lit: Neumann, 1959, pp.60–5, repr. pl.36.
Repr: Grigson, 1943, pl.25 (in colour); Read, 1944, pl.180; Sweeney, 1946, p.69; Read and Sylvester, I, 1957, p.229.

See N05706. A less finished variant, 10×7 1/2 in., with fewer, different figures, belongs to Dr Henry M. Roland (repr. Grohmann, 1960, p.107). There is a sketch for each version in the Shelter Sketch-Books (repr. Editions Poetry London, 1944, that for the Roland version in colour).

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