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

Sir Herbert Read, the owner of this work until his death, wrote the first monograph on Moore's work in 1934, and was a near neighbour when Moore lived at Parkhill Road in Hampstead during the 1930s. This area had become a breeding ground of artistic activity, and here Moore lived amongst Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Naum Gabo and Ivon Hitchens, as well as the poets, Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, and T.S. Eliot. The painter and collector, Roland Penrose, introduced him to the works of European Surrealists, Salvidor Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Joan Miró.

Please see lot 120 for a work by Ben Nicholson, which is being sold from the collection of Sir Herbert and Lady Read.

Moore became involved with this movement for a short time in the middle years of the decade, moving away from the human form and nature towards 'abstractions'. 'Although Moore never seemed completely at ease in sculptural terms either with the Surrealism of Ernst and Dalí or with the dehumanised cerebral mathematical concepts, many large carefully worked drawings exist as a record of his contemporary interests' (see A. Garrould, op. cit., p. ix).