Henry Moore, O.M., C.H. (1898-1986)

'The construction of the human figure is much more difficult to get right than an animal or a tree. It isn’t just academic training, it really is a deep, strong fundamental struggle when you are drawing the human figure.'
- Henry Moore

Henry Moore experienced anxiety and uncertainty at the outbreak of war in September 1939. Stone and wood, the raw materials for his sculpture, would soon be difficult to acquire. There was no point in starting new carvings of any size. He turned to drawings, albeit with a certain amount of trepidation. But his mind was still drawn to sculpture and he continued to conceive ideas for future works during this period. As Moore himself explained, ‘My drawings are done mainly as a help towards making sculpture, as a means of generating ideas for sculpture, tapping oneself for the initial idea; and as a way of sorting out ideas and developing them’ (see A. Wilkinson, ‘Drawings for Sculpture’, exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore, Drawings Watercolours Gouaches, Basel, Galerie Beyeler, 1970, p. 20).

The theme of the reclining figure appears at every phase of Henry Moore’s career and his exploration of the motif was to lead him to increasing abstraction as he turned towards experimentation with the elements of design. He would continually rework the motif in both his drawings and his sculptural works, repositioning, dividing and abstracting the body so that only its elemental nature remained intact.

The uppermost figure depicted in Ideas for Wood Carving: Three Reclining Figures, relates to Moore’s monumental elmwood sculpture Reclining Figure, 1945-46.