Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Gift of the artist to his daughter Mary Moore before 1969, by whom presented to Tate in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.

This is a three-part bronze sculpture of a reclining figure. Its three pieces are spaced at equal intervals along the length of a rectangular bronze base. The surface is dark brown-black in colour with green highlights.

This bronze would have been cast using a mould taken from a plaster original. The plaster version would have been made by applying successive layers of plaster to a supportive armature constructed from lengths of wood and scrim bandage (fig.1). The heavily textured surface of the sculpture demonstrates that Moore fully exploited the material qualities of plaster, working into it as it dried to produce a variety of surface effects. For example, some marks suggest that a spatula was used to apply wet plaster to the surface (fig.2), while striations would have been made using sharp tools or a cheese grater as the plaster began to harden (fig.3).

Once the plaster had completely set it could be chiseled like stone to produce parallel marks, as featured on the upper section of the vertically-oriented piece (fig.4), and small incisions, as seen on the lateral faces of the end section (fig.5). After the plaster sculpture was complete a mould was taken from it that was then used to make a hollow cast in bronze. This sculpture was cast by the Noack Foundry in West Berlin in an edition of seven plus one artist’s copy. It is unclear which method was used to cast this bronze but the level of detail in the surface suggests that the lost wax technique was used. The maximum size of a cast piece of bronze depends upon the size of the crucible used at the foundry as the bronze must be cast in a single pour. In practice this means that bronzes of this size are usually cast in multiple sections, which are then welded together to form the whole. The welds would have been disguised through a process called ‘chasing’. This involves filing down excess metal and using small punch tools to replicate the level and texture of the surrounding bronze. Other than this the bronze has been left as it was cast with no additional surface finishing.

The sculpture has been given an artificial patina, which would have involved the application of chemical solutions to the surface that reacted with the metal to produce coloured compounds. It is possible that this sculpture was originally patinated a dark brown colour with mottled green colouring applied over it to highlight certain forms. However, it has now been displayed outdoors for many years and its original patina has gradually altered as a result of its exposure to the elements. Most bronze sculptures displayed outside eventually start to develop a green colour that intensifies over time due to chemical weathering. This can be seen on the base, where water has pooled over the years, and on the higher and more exposed surfaces, such as the tips of either end section (fig.6).

After patination the sculpture would have been given a protective wax coating. However, this wax deteriorates in outdoor conditions and must be replaced annually as part of an ongoing maintenance programme. This also involves washing the surface to remove dirt deposits and bird lime before the new wax is applied. A black wax was previously used to maintain the surface of this sculpture and this has darkened the patina over time.

The bronze base appears to have been sand cast and then sanded to give a smooth finish. The sculpture’s three components are fixed to the base by either two or three bolts. There are two screw-threaded holes on either side of the base which are probably intended to be used in conjunction with eye bolts. These allow lifting equipment to be attached during the installation and de-installation of the sculpture, demonstrating that Moore and his assistants were already thinking about how the piece would be installed at the fabrication stage.

The artist’s signature and edition number ‘Moore 0/7’, along with the foundry mark ‘Guss: H Noack Berlin’, are visible on the tall section near the base on the right-hand side (figs.7 and 8).

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 is one of two three-part sculptures created by Henry Moore between 1961 and 1963. The other sculpture, Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop 1963, is also held in the Tate collection (Tate T02292). In both cases the figure has been divided into three separate forms positioned on a base, one of which rises vertically to a central point and may be understood to represent a head and torso, which in turn implies that the smaller middle section represents an abdomen or hip area, while the section at the other end occupies the position of the legs.

The main bulk of the torso is made up of bulbous forms and irregular, faceted shapes. On the back, two large concave depressions are separated by a ridged backbone that leads up to broad, rounded shoulders. What appears to represent a head actually takes the form of a thin wedge-shaped protrusion with an uneven upper face that juts forwards and upwards from the outstretched neck (fig.1). The bottom of the torso is attached to the base at three points that form arched spaces underneath the body.

The middle piece is the smallest of the three segments. It also rests on the base at three points, two of which swell upwards in a similar way to the large lateral forms of the torso piece, forming what appear to be two distinct masses. One side of the right-hand form has a smooth, rounded surface while the other side appears to have been carved into, revealing bulbous, ridged surfaces. The left-hand form has one flat face and similar irregular surfaces traversing its other sides. The two forms appear to be joined only by a smaller, disk-like shape that protrudes outwards towards the leg section of the sculpture (fig.2).

This section rests on the base at two points and also appears to be comprised of two vertically orientated forms. These merge together close to the base before rising upwards and outwards to distinct, rounded peaks that might be understood to represent knees (fig.3). The side facing the middle section has a striated surface with a straight upper edge, while the opposite face projects outwards, with one large ridge emerging from the left leg near the base and tracing an upward diagonal across the section to traverse the two forms.

The surfaces of each section have been heavily worked, with grooves and channels suggesting a sense of dynamism around the sculpture. The three pieces have been set on the base at roughly equidistant intervals, although these spaces appear to narrow and close when the sculpture is viewed in the round.

Moore developed his ideas for the three-piece sculptures with a series of small maquettes. By the early 1960s Moore had moved away from making preliminary drawings for his sculptures and had started making small three-dimensional models in plaster and other malleable materials. It is likely that he made the maquette for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 in the maquette studio on the grounds of his home, Hoglands, at Perry Green in Hertfordshire. This studio was lined with shelves displaying Moore’s ever growing collection of found bones, shells and pebbles, the shapes of which often served as starting points for Moore’s formal experiments in three dimensions (fig.4). In 1963 he explained to the critic David Sylvester how he worked with these natural objects:

In the same interview Sylvester went on to ask Moore if he had used found objects in any of the multi-piece reclining figures. Moore replied:

From Moore’s remarks it appears that he made the middle section of the maquette by pressing the vertebra bone into a block of clay, leaving an impression into which he could pour the plaster. After it had dried the plaster would have been removed from the clay and filed back or built up with additional plaster to enhance its forms.

Moore made numerous maquettes for three-piece sculptures between 1961 and 1963. Although some of these maquettes were cast in bronze, such as Three Piece Reclining Figure: Maquette No.1 1961 (fig.5), they were not all scaled up into full-size sculptures. Moore explained that:

The small maquette for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 is believed to be lost or destroyed, and was not cast into bronze. It is also unclear whether Moore created an intermediary working model for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1. Nonetheless, he would have used a maquette or working model as the template for the full-size sculpture. By systematically charting and measuring specific points on the surface of the smaller version it could be enlarged while retaining its original proportions. This process would probably have been carried out in the White Studio in the grounds of Hoglands by one or more of Moore’s sculpture assistants, who between 1961 and 1962 included Geoffrey Greetham, Robert Holding, Clive Sheppard, Bill Smith and Isaac Witkin.

In order to make the full-size plaster from which the bronze was cast Moore and his assistants would have initially constructed a wooden armature to the required size and shape for each section of the sculpture. The armature for the head and torso section was made up of numerous lengths of wood and possibly chicken wire, which were then draped in scrim, a bandage-like fabric (fig.6). Successive layers of plaster could then be applied to the structure while the interior of the armature remained hollow.

Moore’s assistants would have done much of the preliminary work on Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1. This would have included applying layers of plaster over the armature and scrim until only a short section of each of the armature’s outward-facing rods was exposed. The armature did not only serve a structural purpose but was used to facilitate the enlargement process, with the end of each rod corresponding to a point on the surface of the sculpture. Moore explained that ‘once they [the assistants] have brought the work within an inch or so of the measurements I intend it to be, I take it over, and then it becomes a thing I’m working on as it would if I had brought it to that stage myself’.4 Moore could create different types of markings, grooves and cuts depending on the varying wetness of the plaster as it dried. Moore found plaster to be a very useful material because it could be ‘both built up, as in modelling, or cut down, in the way you carve stone or wood’.5

Moore applied colour to the surface of the full-size plaster when it was complete because, as he explained to the critic David Sylvester in 1963, the reflective qualities of white plaster could lend the sculpture an appearance that would be radically different when cast in bronze (fig.7).6 Plaster could cast reflected light onto the underside and recessed areas of sculptures, whereas in bronze these areas would appear far darker. Painting the plaster thus allowed Moore to predict the contrast between different areas of the sculpture’s surface before sending it to the foundry.

In 1962 the finished full-size plaster was sent to the Noack Foundry in West Berlin to be cast in bronze. During the 1950s and early 1960s Moore used a number of different foundries in London and Paris, but started working with Noack in 1958 following an introduction by the dealer Harry Fischer.7 By the 1950s the Noack Foundry was regarded as one of the best foundries equipped to undertake large-scale bronze castings. Moore dealt with its owner Herman Noack directly and paid for the casting of his sculptures himself. In 1967 Moore stated: ‘I use the Noack foundry for casting most of my work because in my opinion, Noack is the best bronze founder I know ... Also, the Noack foundry is reliable in all ways – in keeping to dates of delivery – and in sustaining the quality of their work’.8

The level of detail in the surface suggests that the lost wax method was most likely used to cast the sculpture in bronze. Furthermore, in a letter dated 15 May 1962 Moore explained to the Canadian painter Cleeve Horne that his cast of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 had been delayed because ‘parts of it were only in the wax stage’.9 This technique would have required the foundry to carve up the plaster into sections and create moulds from each piece. The inside of each mould would then be ‘greased’ with a releasing agent before molten wax was poured into it. Once the wax had hardened it could be released from the mould, forming an exact replica of the sculpture in wax. The wax would then be encased in a hard refractory material, placed in a kiln and heated until it melted. Channels within the casing would allow the wax to drain away and, once empty, the cavity was filled with molten bronze. Once the bronze had hardened its casing was removed, revealing a section of sculpture. After every piece of the sculpture had been cast in this way they would be welded together. Finally, the casting seams would have been filed down until the joints between each section of the cast were practically imperceptible.

The mould could be used to create multiple wax replicas, and the casting process was repeated for each sculpture in the edition. After being reassembled at the foundry bronze sculptures were often returned to Moore so that he could inspect the quality of the casting and make decisions about patination. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the pre-heated bronze surface. In 1963 Moore asserted ‘I always patinate bronze myself’, going on to explain that since he had conceived the sculpture it would be unlikely that anyone else would be able to replicate the exact colour he wanted.10 However, Noack is known to have patinated a certain number of Moore’s sculptures at the foundry. But even in these instances Moore was still able to adjust the patina when the sculpture was returned to the studio.

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin and the patina of bronze sculptures displayed outdoors changes over time due to reactions between the metal and chemicals in the air. The cast of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 held in the collection of the Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas is displayed outdoors and has developed a green patina as the copper content of the bronze has oxidised. Tate’s cast is a fairly uniform dark brown colour, which is maintained by regular waxing and cleaning. Nonetheless, the patina has changed over time due to periods of exposure to the weather and patches of green colour can be identified, particularly on the sculpture’s high points (fig.8).

The main source of information about Moore’s three-piece figures is his 1963 BBC Radio interview with David Sylvester, extracts from which were printed in the weekly arts journal the Listener. When asked about the differences between the three-piece reclining figures and the two-piece figures that he created between 1959 and 1962, such as Two Piece Reclining Figure No.2 1960 (Tate T00395), Moore explained:

Moore’s identification of the middle piece of this sculpture as a ‘vertebra’ has a precedent in his earlier multi-part reclining figure Four Piece Composition: Reclining Figure 1934 (T02054; fig.9). In 1968 Moore described the sculpture as comprising ‘the head part, the leg part, the body, and the small round form, which is the umbilicus and which makes a connection’.12 According to former Tate curator Richard Morphet, during the 1930s ‘the umbilicus was important to Moore as a symbol, for it represented the connection of our life with other life. It was therefore his habit to indicate it specifically in most of his figurative sculptures [of the 1930s]’.13 The middle section of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 may be understood in similar terms; it is the element that connects and gives life to the two end pieces.

In the same interview in 1968 Moore remarked that in 1933–4 ‘I began separating forms from each other in order to be able to relate space and form together’.14 This explanation may also be applicable to his multi-part sculptures of the 1960s, which also comprise several distinct forms composed in a way that activates the space between them. During a conversation with Moore on 12 December 1980 Morphet recorded that ‘about both the two-and three-piece reclining figures, Moore was at pains to stress his concern with the interdependence of space and proportion’.15 In this interpretation the gaps between the three sections of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 become active spaces in which the relationships between parts are continually reimagined as the sculpture is experienced in the round.

Moore also found that dividing the body into separate components released it from the immediate constraints of naturalistic representation. As the curator Alan Wilkinson has remarked, Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 ‘only the most tenuous links with the human anatomy’.16 For Wilkinson, ‘the landscape elements of rocks and boulders are so strong and dominant as almost completely to overpower the minimal figurative references’.17 In his 1963 interview with Sylvester Moore said that the landscapes that had most influenced his work were those of his childhood, and in particular the slag heaps of Castleford and Adel Rock outside Leeds. Adel Rock, also known as Adel Crag, is a large outcrop of rock on Adel Moor, near Leeds (fig.10). The critic Donald Hall described the natural phenomenon as comprising ‘two huge rocks ... one is narrow and vertical; the other is split, enormous and jagged’ and suggested that it is difficult to look at Adel Crag without seeing a Henry Moore sculpture.18 Moore had visited the rock formation as a child and claimed that the experience left an indelible mark on his appreciation of natural forms. He later recalled that ‘for me, it was the first big, bleak lump of stone set in the landscape and surrounded by marvelous gnarled prehistoric trees. It had no feature of recognition, no element of copying naturalism, just a bleak powerful form, very impressive’.19

In 1973 the critic John Russell expanded upon these parallels, claiming that the form of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 is ‘closely related to cliff-face and mountain-side’.20 He went on to suggest that, while Moore’s works of the 1930s reimagine the figure to look like stones or boulders, the multi-part works of 1959–61 appear to take boulders and relate them to the human body. Russell saw this logic as cumulative, so that by the time Moore created Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 ‘he was beginning to make the point that boulders look like boulders: very imposing and finely-worked boulders, but boulders none the less’.21 The critic Robert Melville had given a similar interpretation in 1970, suggesting that in his two- and three-piece sculptures Moore was not transforming the female body into a landscape, but rather presenting landscapes which incidentally recalled the female form: ‘They are images of rocky landscapes which bear an “accidental” resemblance to woman.’22

Rock formations not only provided a point of reference for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 but also Stone Memorial 1961–9 (fig.11). Moore created the preliminary maquette for this sculpture in 1961, and the large-scale carving in travertine marble bears affinities with the irregular forms of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1. According to the filmmaker John Read, ‘the comparison between the human figure and the rolling slopes of hills or the worn-down shapes of boulders is inescapable. This blending of human and natural form, this ability to see figures in the landscape, and a landscape in the figures, is Moore’s greatest contribution to sculpture. His works are literally landmarks’.23

An example of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 was displayed in a two-person exhibition at the Marlborough Fine Art’s New London Gallery in July 1963. In this show nineteen recent sculptures by Moore were exhibited alongside thirteen paintings by Francis Bacon. The works Moore included in the show were generally reviewed favourably, with David Thompson writing in the Times:

The curator Bryan Robertson was similarly positive towards Moore’s new sculptures, suggesting in the Listener that the new works demonstrated an inventive departure from the more elegant and coherent reclining women that dominated Moore’s work of the 1950s. Robertson asserted:

Like Thompson, the critic Eric Newton, writing in the Guardian, noted the influence of rocks, boulders and mountainous landscapes upon Moore’s formal language. He too acknowledged the awesome nature of Moore’s work, and concluded his review by noting, ‘it is remarkable that an artist who has made so many creative discoveries and added so much to the sum total of sculptural rhythms in our own century, should be able to continue on his voyages of discovery without seeming to repeat his past successes or enlarge on his own inventions’.26 Similarly, the critic Nigel Gosling reflected in the Observer that ‘at 65, Moore might be expected to be slowing down in invention, but here he seems to be as fertile as ever. He not only solves problems – we all know he can do that. He finds fascinating problems to solve’.27 However, Gosling also highlighted shortcomings with Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1:

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 was presented by the artist’s daughter Mary Danowski (née Moore) to the Tate Gallery in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.29 The Gift comprised thirty-six sculptures in bronze, marble and plaster and was exhibited in its entirety alongside Tate’s existing collection of Moore’s work in an exhibition celebrating the artist’s eightieth birthday, which opened in June 1978. A press release was duly prepared announcing that ‘The group [of sculptures] is the most substantial gift of works ever given to the Tate by an artist during his lifetime’.30 Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 was included in the exhibition and was displayed on the lawn in front of the gallery along with four other sculptures (fig.12). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.31 At its close in late August the Director of Tate, Norman Reid, reflected in a letter to Mary Danowski that although he was sad to see the exhibition come to an end ‘we have the consolation of the splendid group of sculptures which Henry has presented to the nation’.32

After the 1978 exhibition Tate decided that it should lend certain large-scale works from the Henry Moore Gift to regional galleries in the United Kingdom on a long-term basis.33 Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 was lent to Leeds City Art Gallery where it was displayed outside the front of the gallery from 1979 until 1987. Since 1988 the sculpture has been on loan to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield.

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 was cast in an edition of seven plus one artist’s copy. The version in Tate’s collection is stamped with the artist’s signature and the number ‘0/7’ (fig.13), indicating that this cast was originally the artist’s copy. The full-size plaster is held in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and the other bronze casts can be found in the Kreeger Museum, Washington; Rochester Institute of Technology, New York; Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas; and CIBC Tower, Montreal. The remaining casts are believed to be held in private collections.