Henry Moore OM, CH

Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross

1955–6, cast 1958–60

© The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved

License this image

Not on display

Artist
Henry Moore OM, CH 1898–1986
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
Object: 3327 × 978 × 965 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Presented by the artist 1978
Reference
T02274

Display caption

In the mid 1950s, Moore made twelve Upright Motives. These three, though often displayed together, have also been shown independently. A cast of Upright Motive No.2, for example, is sited in the centre of Harlow. Likewise, a cast of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross can be found on the Glenkiln estate in Scotland.

Gallery label, August 2004

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

Catalogue entry

Entry

Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross is a tall, vertically-orientated sculpture consisting of two distinct parts: the upper half comprises a loosely cross-shaped mass while the lower half takes the form of a columnar plinth. Although designed to be seen in the round, the side featuring a relief panel with a half moon is conventionally regarded as the front of the sculpture (fig.1).
The upper half of the sculpture resembles a warped Latin cross. The central shaft, which is deeper than it is wide, tapers outwards as it extends upwards from an irregular bulbous form or burr. Approximately two thirds up this shaft are two fin-like, irregular stumps or arms that project almost horizontally from either side of the central axis, which culminates in a narrow but deep, semi-cylindrical shape with domed faces at the front and back. A truncated, rounded swelling protrudes from the front in between the central shaft and the right arm.
The lower section of the sculpture is a tall cuboid, patterned on the front and rear with surface designs. The front side features a rectangular relief with a curved lower edge (fig.2). It is incised with parallel and equidistant vertical lines, two of which (towards the left) have been linked by a series of short horizontal incisions. A circular depression can also be seen towards the lower right of this relief interrupting the lines, which terminate just above a raised crescent, into which another smaller crescent has been etched. Another raised form – a disk with a depression just above its centre – can be seen just above the relief’s curved lower edge, which cuts deeply into the surface but tapers off to the right-hand edge of the cuboid. At the base of the sculpture there are two rectangular indentations of different sizes.

Making the Upright Motives

Sources and development

Spiritual themes

The Henry Moore Gift

Alice Correia
March 2013

Notes

1
Henry Moore cited in John Hedgecoe (ed.), Henry Moore, London 1968, p.245.
2
Ann Garrould, Henry Moore. Volume 4: Complete Drawings 1950–76, London 2003, p.73.
3
Alan G. Wilkinson, Henry Moore Remembered: The Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Toronto 1987, p.160.
4
Henry Moore cited in Gemma Levine, With Henry Moore: The Artist at Work, London 1978, p.123.
5
See Henry Moore at Perry Green, London 2011, p.17.
6
Henry Moore in ‘Henry Moore Talking to David Sylvester’, 7 June 1963, transcript of Third Programme, broadcast BBC Radio, 14 July 1963, Tate Archive TGA 200816, p.18. (An edited version of this interview was published in the Listener, 29 August 1963, pp.305–7.)
7
Julie Summers, ‘Fragment of Maquette for King and Queen’, in Claude Allemand-Cosneau, Manfred Fath and David Mitchinson (eds.), Henry Moore From the Inside Out: Plasters, Carvings and Drawings, Munich 1996, p.126.
8
See Roger Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, 1987, revised edn, London 2003, p.323–4.
9
Henry Moore, letter to Heinz Ohff, 8 March 1967, Henry Moore Foundation Archive.
10
Moore cited in Hedgecoe 1968, p.248.
11
Henry Moore cited in Donald Hall, ‘Henry Moore: An Interview by Donald Hall’, Horizon, November 1960, reprinted in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot 2002, p.234.
12
John Russell in Henry Moore, John Russell and A.M. Hammacher, Drie Staande Motieven, Otterlo 1965, unpaginated.
13
Ibid., figs.1–7.
14
Herbert Read, Henry Moore: A Study of his Life and Work, London 1965, p.206.
15
Moore’s niece, Ann Garrould, who catalogued Moore’s drawings, deciphered Moore’s hand written note as ‘New Ireland | stump’, while the art historian Christa Lichtenstern has read it as ‘New Ireland | string’. See Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore. Volume 2: Complete Drawings 1930–39, London 1998, p.154, and Christa Lichtenstern, Henry Moore: Work-Theory-Impact, London 2008, p.205.
16
Garrould 1998, p.154.
17
In his introduction to the book Moore concluded that, ‘It has been a wonderful experience for me to recapture the delight, the excitement, the inspiration I got in these pieces as a young and developing sculptor’. Henry Moore, Henry Moore at the British Museum, London 1981, p.16.
18
Ibid., p.91.
19
Moore, Russell and Hammacher 1965, unpaginated.
20
Anon., ‘Acquisitions of Works of Art by Museums and Galleries: Supplement’, Burlington Magazine, vol.107, no.747, June 1965, p.338.
21
Read 1965, p.206.
22
Andrew Causey, The Drawings of Henry Moore, London 2010, p.71.
23
Sam Smiles, ‘Equivalents for the Megaliths: Prehistory and English Culture, 1920–50’, in David Peters Corbett, Ysanne Holt and Fiona Russell (eds.), The Geographies of Englishness: Landscape and the National Past 1880–1940, New Haven 2002, pp.199–223.
24
Henry Moore, letter to Paul Nash, 15 September 1933, Tate Archive TGA 8313/1/2/153.
25
Penelope Curtis and Fiona Russell, ‘Henry Moore and the Post-War British Landscape: Monuments Ancient and Modern’, in Jane Beckett and Fiona Russell (eds.), Henry Moore: Critical Essays, Aldershot 2003, p.138.
26
Causey 2010, p.75.
27
Read 1965, p.206.
28
Michel Remy, Surrealism in Britain, Aldershot 1999.
29
Causey 2010, p.79.
30
Henry Moore cited in Arnold Haskell, ‘On Carving’, New English Weekly, 5 May 1932, pp.65–6, reprinted in Wilkinson 2002, p.190.
31
Ibid., p.152.
32
John Russell, Henry Moore, London 1968, p.152.
33
Henry Moore, ‘Interview with Elizabeth Blunt’, Kaleidoscope, radio programme, broadcast BBC Radio 4, 9 April 1973, transcript reprinted in Wilkinson 2002, p.167.
34
See Minotaure, no.1, 1933, pp.36–7. For further discussion on Moore’s familiarity with French periodicals, including Minotaure, see Julia Kelly, ‘The Unfamiliar Figure: Henry Moore in French Periodicals of the 1930s’, in Beckett and Russell 2003, pp.43–65. See also Christopher Green, ‘Henry Moore and Picasso’, in James Beechy and Chris Stephens (eds.), Picasso and Modern British Art, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2012, pp.130–49.
35
Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London 1960, p.197.
36
The centre was demolished in 2010 and Moore’s Wall Relief No.1 was put into storage by the city of Rotterdam. See http://www.arttube.nl/en/video/CBK_Rotterdam/Henry_Moore, accessed 28 January 2014.
37
Anita Feldman Bennet, ‘Rediscovering Humanism’, in Henry Moore: In the Light of Greece, exhibition catalogue, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros 2000, p.69.
38
Russell 1968, p.151.
39
[Richard Calvocoressi], ‘T.2281, Three Motives Against Wall No.2’, The Tate Gallery 1978–80: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1981, p.126.
40
See, for example, Grohmann 1960, p.197, and Herbert Read, ‘Introduction’, in Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore. Volume 3: Sculpture and Drawings 1955–64, 1965, revised edn, London 1986, p.7.
41
Peyton Skipwith, ‘Abstract Sculpture and Modern Architecture’, in Henry Moore and Michael Rosenauer, exhibition catalogue, Fine Art Society, London 1988, unpaginated.
42
Peyton Skipwith, ‘Catalogue’, in Henry Moore and Michael Rosenauer, 1988, unpaginated.
43
Grohmann 1960, p.197.
44
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenkiln_Sculpture_Park, accessed 21 March 2013.
45
John McEwen, Glenkiln, with photographs by John Haddington, Edinburgh 1993, p.27.
46
Robert Melville, ‘Exhibitions’, Architectural Review, vol.127, no.763, September 1960, p.222.
47
McEwen 1993, p.27.
48
Henry Moore cited in Melville 1960, p.222.
49
Melville 1960, p.222.
50
In 1973 Moore stated that, ‘Although I was baptised and made to go to church as a boy, I am not a practicing Christian’. Moore cited in Donald Carroll, The Donald Carroll Interviews, London 1973, p.35, reprinted in Wilkinson 2002, p.269.
51
Grohmann 1960, p.198.
52
Christa Lichtenstern later expanded upon the relationship between Celtic crosses and Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross. See Lichtenstern 2008, p.206.
53
See J.P. Hodin, Moore, London 1958, unpaginated.
54
Henry Moore, Heads, Figures and Ideas, London 1958.
55
Grohmann 1960, p.215.
56
Read 1965, p.206.
57
Ibid., p.206.
58
Carl Jung, ‘On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry’ (1931) cited in ibid., p.208.
59
Ibid., p.208.
60
Moore cited in Hedgecoe 1968, p.250.
61
Kenneth Clark, ‘Foreword’, in David Finn, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Environment, New York 1977, p.20.
62
Melville 1960, p.222.
63
See Sculpture in the Open Air, exhibition catalogue, Battersea Park, London 1960, pp.19–20.
64
Nevile Wallis, ‘Elemental Moore’, Observer, 27 November 1960, p.27.
65
Moore in Moore, Russell and Hammacher 1965, unpaginated.
66
Ibid.
67
Russell 1968, p.141.
68
Ibid., p.143.
69
Ibid., p.155.
70
Moore cited in Hedgecoe 1968, p.250.
71
Anon., ‘Acquisitions of Works of Art by Museums and Galleries: Supplement’, Burlington Magazine, vol.107, no.747, June 1965, p.338.
72
Margaret Garlake, New Art / New World: British Art in Postwar Society, New Haven and London 1998, p.191.
73
Susan Compton (ed.), Henry Moore, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1988, p.237.
74
See ‘Note on the Henry Moore Gift’, 1978, Tate Public Records TG 4/6/10/4.
75
These figures are based on those listed in a memo in the records for the exhibition. See Tate Public Records TG 92/344/2.
76
Norman Reid, letter to Mary Danowski, 31 August 1978, Tate Public Records TG 4/6/10/4.
77
Ruth Rattenbury, letter to Mrs B. Tinsley, 25 July 1978, Tate Public Records TG 92/344/2.
78
Roy Perry, ‘Damage Report T.2274 T.2276 Henry Moore’, 1 June 1983, Tate Public Records TG 4/9/391/6.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop