Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Presented by the artist to Tate in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.

This bronze sculpture, which is mounted on a rectangular bronze base, has a highly textured surface displaying numerous tool marks and striations that accentuate its contours (fig.1). Moore probably made the original model for this sculpture by building up wet plaster over a supportive armature, which was likely constructed from metal wire and wood. Moore shaped the roughly layered plaster with tools such as files, saw blades and surforms as it set and hardened to produce its clean edges and striated surface. When the model was complete a mould was taken from it so that the sculpture could be cast into bronze. The sculpture and base both have a slightly granular surface appearance that suggests they were both sand cast. Small file marks show where casting seams and flashes have been chased but the bronze surface has otherwise received little finishing.

The surface has been patinated a uniform dark brown colour. This patina would have been achieved by applying successive layers of chemical solution to the surface with a brush. In this case a solution of potassium polysulphide (known in foundries as ‘liver of sulphur’) was probably applied to build up the depth of colour. The first layers of patina have been rubbed back on the more textured surfaces of the sculpture to reveal brighter high points. More transparent layers of brown patina were then added on top. The base has a smooth, polished surface with a more regular patina. After patination both the sculpture and the base were covered in a layer of wax and buffed to a sheen.

The sculpture is inscribed with the artist’s signature, ‘Moore’, and stamped with the edition number ‘0/9’ just above the lower edge of one of the sculpture’s legs (fig.2). The base is 50 mm deep and a supporting strut has been welded across its centre. Two screw-threaded bolts fix the sculpture to the base while screw-threaded mounts at each of its four corners allow the base to be securely fastened to a plinth.

This bronze sculpture is made up of five interlocking pieces, each of which forms a right angle. Although they are irregularly shaped, the pieces contain both sharp and rounded edges, smoothly curved surfaces and more than one projecting appendage, which enables each piece to interlock or overlap with at least two others (fig.1). Two of these limb-like forms point down to the base and serve to support the mass above from both ends. The sculpture as a whole is horizontally orientated, and is approximately as wide as it is tall.

Large Slow Form was cast in 1968 having been developed and enlarged from a smaller sculpture conceived in 1962 called Slow Form: Tortoise. Discussing this earlier work Moore commented that ‘it is one right-angled form, repeated five times, and arranged together to make an organic composition. This repeated slow right-angle reminded me of the action of a tortoise’.1 One of the pieces has a concave upper surface and terminates in an upward-facing point at one end of the form. This may be seen to serve as a kind of ‘head’, suggesting a natural orientation to the sculpture. This end is also slightly taller than the other and creates, when viewed in conjunction with the raised point at the centre of the sculpture where three pieces meet, a diagonal incline through the form.

Moore began work on Slow Form: Tortoise by making a small maquette of the sculpture from plaster, clay or another malleable material. When he was satisfied with the design Moore would then have scaled up the maquette in plaster (fig.2). The enlarged form would have been built by applying successive layers of plaster to a supportive armature constructed from wood or chicken wire. Once the plaster version of Slow Form: Tortoise was complete it was sent to the Art Bronze Foundry in London to be cast in bronze. The foundry technicians would have used the plaster original to create a hollow mould into which molten bronze could be poured. Slow Form: Tortoise 1962 (fig.3) was cast in an edition of nine plus one artist’s copy, and according to records held at the Henry Moore Foundation all ten sculptures were cast in 1968, six years after the original maquette was made.

In 1968 Moore also began working up Slow Form: Tortoise to a larger scale. The dots and numbers pencilled onto the plaster version of Slow Form: Tortoise indicate that it was used as a guide for the enlarged plaster version of Large Slow Form. The enlargement work would have been carried out in the White Studio at Hoglands by Moore’s studio assistants, who in 1968 were Colin Barker, John Farnham, Ramy Shuklinsky and Yeheskiel Yardini. Moore was able to allocate the bulk of his enlargement work to others because, as curator Julie Summers has noted, it was ‘a scientific rather than artistic process’.2 Once the full-size plaster version of Large Slow Form was near completion Moore would then take over to finish the detailing of the surface.

The sculpture has a slightly granular texture and fine lines and tool marks indicate where Moore has worked into the surface of the original plaster (fig.4). Large Slow Form was also cast at the Art Bronze Foundry, mostly likely using the sand casting technique judging by the light, speckled texture of the finished bronze surface.

The sculpture is signed ‘Moore’ and stamped with the edition number ‘0/9’ just above the lower edge of the shorter rear leg (fig.5). The sculpture was cast in an edition of nine, plus one artist’s copy, designated by the edition number 0/9. According to Moore’s former personal assistant, the curator David Mitchinson, Moore ‘would decide how large an edition to produce, usually after seeing the first cast’.3 Although Moore often cast his maquettes and mid-size working models such as Large Slow Form in editions of nine, this was not a fixed rule. Some confusion over the numbering of the edition of Large Slow Form appears to have occurred, as a version held in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation is also stamped ‘0/9’.4 Usually the artist’s copy was only cast once all of the casts for sale had been made. However, Mitchinson accounts for this discrepancy by noting that ‘sometimes a [artist’s] cast needed for exhibition was taken out of sequence’.5 Since all nine of the sale casts have been accounted for, this means that eleven examples of Large Slow Form were produced in total.

After casting at the foundry the sculptures were 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 heated bronze surface. Tate’s copy of Large Slow Form has a fairly consistent dark brown patina with lighter, golden brown areas confined largely to the sculpture’s high points.

Because Moore associated the shape of Slow Form: Tortoise, and therefore Large Slow Form, with a tortoise, both sculptures have generally been regarded as examples of the artist’s engagement with animal forms. As early as 1934 the critic Herbert Read identified animals as one of Moore’s key interests. According to Read, in his animal sculptures from the 1920s Moore reduced the subject to certain basic shapes or features ‘which best denote its vitality’.6 ‘Vitality’ was a concept that Moore himself had highlighted in his 1933 statement for the publication Unit One.7 In this text Moore explained that, ‘for me a work must first have a vitality of its own. I do not mean a reflection of the vitality of life, of movement, physical action, frisking, dancing figures and so on, but that a work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the object it may represent’.8 This idea that ‘vitality’ conveys the essential life force of a creature more convincingly than naturalistic representation may account for the arrangement of forms in Large Slow Form.

According to W.J. Strachan, author of the publication Henry Moore: Animals (1983), ‘between 1921 and 1982 Henry Moore has made fifty-eight animal sculptures and has drawn many scores of animals – domestic, wild, fantastic’.9 Regarding Large Slow Form, Strachan proposed that as well as suggesting the movement of a tortoise, the sculpture’s surface recalled the ‘armour-plated’ hide of a rhinoceros.10 However, Strachan also noted that many of Moore’s animal sculptures took ‘liberties with reality’ and often had no clear referent in nature.11 This observation echoes the critic John Russell’s claim in 1973 that, ‘Over and over again in the 1950s and 1960s Moore invented animal-forms which belong to no known bestiary and yet are quintessentially plausible. We can’t give name to them, but we accept the fact of their existence’.12

In 2006 the sculptor Anthony Caro, who had served as Moore’s studio assistant between 1951 and 1953, wrote of Large Slow Form:

Large Slow Form was presented by Henry Moore to the Tate Gallery in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift. 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’.14 Large Slow Form was displayed in gallery twenty-one alongside Working Model for Knife Edge Two Piece 1962 (Tate T00603) and Two Piece Reclining Figure No.3 1961 (Tate T02287) (fig.6). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.15 At its close in late August the Director of Tate, Norman Reid, reflected in a letter to Moore’s daughter 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’.16

Other casts of Large Slow Form are held in the collections of the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan; and The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green.