Moore’s affinity for primitivism is also evident through his sculptural process in which he adopted direct carving. Family Group is derived from one of a number of. The family group and mother and child, which had captured Moore's imagination since his early visits to the British Museum reflect his own personal experience of maternal devotion but also became evocative symbols of the ideal domestic relationship, providing a sense of community, parental unity and stability after the dark days of the war. But then the solid stone around them suffers in its shape because its main purpose is to enclose the hole” (Henry Moore, quoted in Alan Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, London, 2002, p. 276). Your email address will not be published. In these works such as the present one, he abandoned the naturalistic approach he took in 1944 and 1945 in favor of a more abstracted arrangement of the figural group. Privacy Statement - opens in a new window. 3: Vertebrae (Working Model), Large Four Piece Reclining Figure 1972â73, Three-Piece Reclining Figure: Draped 1975. As he explained, “…the scenes of the shelter world…remained vivid in my mind. +1 212 940 1278, Paysan catalan inquiet par le passage d'un vol d'oiseaux, 15 7/8 x 10 1/2 x 7 in. In this model, the father's head had a distinctive notch, also seen in other early works such as Four-Piece Composition: Reclining Figure of 1934, and Reclining Figure 1938. Of this Moore espoused, “Making a hole in stone is such a willed thing, such a conscious effort, and often the holes became things in themselves. Family Group is derived from one of a number of maquettes that Moore made for a sculpture for Impington Village College in Cambridgeshire. Family Group is one of at least fourteen small models made by Henry Moore in the mid-1940s, each of which presents a family group in different poses and configurations. 251, p. 75Robert Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1969, London, 1970, no. John Rothenstein, letter to Henry Moore, 4 December 1950, Tate Public Records TG 4/2/742/2. It will enhance any encyclopedic page you visit with the magic of the WIKI 2 technology. Conceived in 1945 and cast circa 1946. Each measurement referred to a specific point on the surface of the model, which could then be recreated to the correct scale. Henry Moore in ‘Henry Moore Talking to David Sylvester’, 7 June 1963, transcript of. Part of Hertfordshire's Community Archive Network. It made me hesitate to make material do what I wanted until I began to realize this was a limitation in sculpture so that often the forms were all buried inside each other and heads were given no necks…Out of an exaggerated respect for the material, I was reducing the power of the form” (Henry Moore, quoted in John Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision: The Sculpture of Henry Moore, London, 1998, p. 46).
The source code for the WIKI 2 extension is being checked by specialists of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Apple. The ideals of this progressive school, whose buildings had been designed by famed modernist architect and founder of the Bauhaus Walter Gropius, greatly appealed to Moore. And if the sculptor knows that his work is going to be seen all round, it is a further impetus to sculpt all round. He specialises in UK tax and the taxation issues relating to international families. In contrast, the child is chubby and rounded. As Andrew Causey aptly described of the difference between Moore and his modernist peers, for him “Abstraction was a tool, not an objective” (Andrew Causey, “His darkened imagination: Henry Moore”, Tate Etc., issue 18, January 1, 2010, online).Moore’s interest in primitive and Pre-Columbian art was another source of inspiration for his abstract-driven practice. Stylistically, this is evident through his incorporation of simplified organic forms with emotive power, which he first encountered as a student visiting the Cycladic figurines in the British Museum’s collection in the 1920s. Family Group (LH 269) is a sculpture by Henry Moore. He moved to Perry Green, Much Hadham, in 1940, where he set up the Henry Moore Foundation in 1977 to promote art appreciation and to display his work.
All Rights Reserved. The sculpture group comprises three human figures, on a low bench: woman, man, and child. The first cast of this family group was made for the Barclay Secondary School at Stevenage, under the scheme brought in by the Hertfordshire County Council for spending a fraction of one per cent of the building estimates on pictures and sculptures for its new schools. It was to be in front of a curved baffle-wall about 20ft. The Room: Contemporary Art, Editions, & Photographs. Henry Moore (1898-1986) Henry Moore’s Family Group sculptures made between 1946 and 1947 represent a pivotal moment in his career. Get Directions. Eventually, his ideas were rejected because funding was not available, and the project in Cambridgeshire went unrealised. 31, pp. The council's education officer Henry Morris approached Moore again in 1944, and Moore made a small clay model in 1945, now held by the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. Henry Moore, letter to Martin Butlin, 22 January 1963, Tate Artist Catalogue File, Henry Moore, Reclining & Standing Figure and Family Group. Moore also made several other clay models, some cast in bronze, with three held by the Tate. The foundry also made a fourth bronze, as an artist's copy. Available through leading London art gallery Osborne Samuel. It was Moore’s first large-scale commission after the war. In September 1994 Meadows recalled that in order to enlarge the plaster to scale he built a measuring frame over the version to be enlarged and another over the model. Several years later, however, he was approached to make a sculpture for the Barclay Secondary School in Stevenage and returned to the theme. This was the first time Moore made a near-life-size plaster model. Local opinion was not uniformly positive: a local postman was quoted as saying it resembled something from Belsen. By the 1940s, sculptures like Family Group become the first to separate Moore from these avant-garde movements, freeing him from those artistic ideologies. 81 (another cast illustrated). Henry Moore in ‘Henry Moore Talking to David Sylvester’, 7 June 1963, transcript of. He was part of the Moore Stephens LLP family office team and now is a director in Moore Family Office working with the Moore Family Office Group. Anon., ‘Leicester Galleries Mr Henry Moore’. Moore returned to the design in 1947, when he was asked to create a sculpture for a new school in Stevenage, at a time when Hertfordshire County Council was involved in an ambitious building programme of new schools and devoted part of the budget to sourcing artworks from leading British artists. (A similarly unflattering comparison was made to his Reclining Figure: Festival, exhibited at the Festival of Britain in 1951.). Family Group and the other maquettes in the series also partly grew out of Moore's enduring fascination with the theme of the mother and child, a subject he first explored in 1922. It will enhance any encyclopedic page you visit with the magic of the WIKI 2 technology. Curt Valentin, letter to Henry Moore, 17 February 1950, Tate Public Records TG 4/2/742/2. Argan, Henry Moore, New York, 1971, no. Meanwhile, two bronze copies were cast by Fonderie Rudier [fr], in Paris, using a sand casting method. See Eugène Rudier, letter to Norman Reid, 23 February 1951, Tate Public Records TG 4/2/742/2. As he explained, "instead of just building a school, he [Morris] was going to make a centre for the whole life of the surrounding villages, and we hit upon this idea of the family being the unit we were aiming at" (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 89). Three of the five castings from the 1950s are still owned by the original owners, Barclay School, the Tate Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The subject appeared in Moore's work at this time following a commission from Henry Morris to create a sculpture for the Village College at Impington.