HOGLANDS - Henry Moore Foundation
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
HOGLANDS
Henry Moore’s family home
Henry Moore and his wife Irina moved
to Perry Green in 1940, after their
London home was damaged during the
Blitz. Henry and Irina were able to rent
half of a former farmhouse, by the name
of Hoglands, in the centre of the hamlet.
The sale of a 1939 elmwood carving,
Reclining Figure, to fellow artist Gordon
Onslow Ford soon allowed them to buy the whole house.
The Moores remained at Hoglands for the rest of their lives. Moore acquired more land,
piece by piece, and added more studios. Irina created a beautiful and vibrant garden; a
perfect backdrop to her husband’s work. Hoglands was very much the centre of both family
life and Henry Moore’s business.
In 2004 we were able to acquire Hoglands from Irina and Henry Moore’s daughter Mary
and, after careful restoration, it was opened to visitors in 2007. The house now contains
many artefacts, books and works of art that were part of Henry and Irina Moore’s personal
collection. These have been kindly loaned to the Foundation by the Moore family.
Unfortunately, Hoglands is not open to visitors in 2020.
SUMMER HOUSE
Henry Moore’s drawing studio
This small studio was returned to the
gardens in 2016. Henry Moore acquired
this summer house in c.1951, siting it in
the garden of Hoglands. It provided him
with an informal space for drawing,
connected to the outdoors and with
plenty of natural light.
Originally mounted on a turntable, it
could be rotated to change views and
find the best conditions at different times
of the day. The summer house has been
packed away and wrapped for winter to
protect the building and its contents.
OVAL WITH POINTS
1968-70 (LH 596)
Casting a dramatic silhouette and
bulging with energy, this sculpture is one
of Moore’s most iconic works and one of
the most successful abstract forms that
he explored at the end of the 1960s. At
this time, Moore was at the height of his
international fame, and a surge of public
commissions challenged him to become
increasingly inventive in his approach.
His work from this period is
characterised by dynamic forms and a
playful approach to mass and void.
Other casts of Oval With Points are sited
in Hong Kong, America, Germany and
Saudi Arabia.
DRAPED RECLINING
FIGURE
1952-53 (LH 336)
Moore’s lifelong fascination with the
reclining figure began in the 1920s when
he first encountered the Mesoamerican
Chacmool figure.
This sculpture, originally commissioned
for the Time Life building on New Bond
Street, is his first to feature realistic
drapery. The figure was initially made in
plaster, which Moore built up to create
a richly textured surface evoking ripples,
creases and folds.
TWO PIECE RECLINING
FIGURE: CUT
1979-81 (LH 758)
Moore began experimenting with break-
ing his reclining figures into two and
three parts as early as 1934. By 1959, he
was creating monumental figures
composed of two or three parts and
the negative spaces between them. By
breaking down the boundaries of the
human form he aimed to unite the body
and landscape.
Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut exists in
four scales: from the original maquette
at just 20cm in length to this 5m long
version completed when Moore was 83.
THREE PIECE
SCULPTURE: VERTEBRAE
1968-69 (LH 580)
It is likely that this sculpture was inspired by
a bone or piece of flint in Moore’s maquette
studio. Like vertebrae, the forms share the
same basic shape but are not identical.
Their arrangement too recalls a spine; the
forms interlock in a horizontal, rhythmic,
row. The two end pieces mirror each other,
their angular uprights leaning towards the
connecting piece between them.
Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae was one of
the last large works made using an
internal wooden armature, which was
draped in scrim (a bandage-like fabric) and
then covered with successive layers of wet
plaster.
KNIFE EDGE
TWO PIECE
1962-65 (LH 516)
This work shows Moore’s
re-engagement with abstraction during
the 1960s. The work comprises two
upright forms, set parallel to each other
on a bronze base. As you move around
the sculpture, the view changes
dramatically. From the longest edge, the
viewer is confronted by wide, flat
masses. End-on, the thinness of the two
elements is revealed, the flat masses
now reduced to narrow forms with
razor-sharp edges which stretch
upwards, slicing through the sky.
All three casts of Knife Edge Two Piece are
on public display. One occupies a
prominent position outside the Houses
of Parliament in Westminster. Moore
donated the Westminster cast to the
nation through the Contemporary Art
Society, and chose the site himself.
RECLINING MOTHER
AND CHILD
1975-76 (LH 649)
Moore was a student when he made his
first sketch of a mother and child in 1921-
22. He swiftly recognised the richness of
the subject, both on a human and a formal
level, and it became an artistic obsession
that he explored throughout his life.
Reclining Mother and Child was made in
1975-76, when Moore was in his late
seventies. The sculpture combines two of
his dominant themes: the reclining figure
and the mother and child. Although
several examples of this combination exist
in Moore’s drawings, he very rarely
conflated them in sculpture, preferring to
treat them as separate subjects.
RECLINING FIGURE:
ANGLES
1979 (LH 675)
Like many of Moore’s late works,
Reclining Figure: Angles is characterised
by a sense of confidence and
consolidation. The work pulls together
diverse interests from his long career,
and combines them with a distinctive
twist typical of works from this period.
The figure’s pose has echoes of the
Mesoamerican chacmool sculptures that
sparked Moore’s interest in the
reclining figure. Like the chacmool, the
figure reclines on its back, supported on
its elbows with its knees raised and head
turned away from the body.
References to classical sculpture are also
apparent in the naturalism of the
figure and the drapery covering her
lower portion. In the early part of his
career, Moore rejected classical
sculpture but following his first visit to
Greece in 1951 he began incorporating
drapery in his sculpture.
THE ARCH
1963/69 (LH 503b)
The Arch is one of the most dramatic
examples of Moore’s sculpture in the open
air. Enlarged from a maquette only a few
inches high, the original inspiration came
from a fragment of bone.
Standing at over six metres high, The Arch
could be described as the culmination of
Moore’s thoughts on the body as
architecture. Since a visit to Stonehenge in
1921, Moore had dreamt of making
sculpture which you could almost inhabit.
He was aware of the relationship between
The Arch and the triumphal arches of
past architecture, and naturally occurring
structures such as sea arches and caves.
The first cast of The Arch was made in
fibreglass, for installation on the roof of
the Forte de Belvedere in Florence during
Moore’s celebrated 1972 exhibition. In
1980, Moore donated a large travertine
marble version to Kensington Gardens in
London.
LARGE UPRIGHT
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL
FORM
1953-54, CAST 1981-82 (LH 297a)
Moore repeatedly explored the theme of
internal/external forms, declaring it one
of his favourite subjects. It provided the
perfect opportunity to investigate
sculptural relationships, generating
visual excitement by presenting one
form through another. It was the natural
development of Moore’s early
experiments with piercing holes in his
sculpture.
At over 7m tall, this work soars over the
viewer appearing simultaneously natural
and alien. It recalls the slightly sinister air
of Moore’s earlier ‘Helmet Head’ works,
inspired by the armour at the Wallace
Collection. Unlike the ‘Helmet Heads’,
however, Moore allowed this work to
develop in a decidedly organic direction,
emphasising the procreative
connotations of the internal/external
theme.
LARGE RECLINING
FIGURE
1984 (LH 192b)
Large Reclining Figure is the product of
Moore’s fourth and final collaboration with
the architect I. M. Pei. Together, Moore
and Pei selected a 1938 Reclining Figure
(LH 192) – a 33 cm sculpture - as an idea
suitable for enlargement and installation
at one of Pei’s most ambitious projects
- the 56 storey Singapore home of the
Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation.
Work on the enlargement began in 1983.
Initially, Moore’s assistants made a
full-size model in polystyrene (now
destroyed), which was then refined before
being cast in bronze at the Morris
Singer Foundry in Basingstoke. At over 9
m long and weighing 4 tons, the final work
is Moore’s largest to be cast in bronze.
Only two bronze casts were made; the one
destined for Singapore was sent by sea
in 1984, and the second is sited here at
Moore’s former home.
SHEEP PIECE
1971-72 (LH 627)
Moore’s maquette studio overlooked
a field where a local farmer grazed his
sheep. In 1972, Moore began drawing the
sheep from a small desk in front of the
window. He said, ‘…I went on drawing,
because the lambing season had begun,
and there in front of me was the mother-
and-child theme.’ Moore attributed his
interest in the mother and child theme to
the unending sculptural possibilities in
the relationship between two forms, one
large and one small. In Sheep Piece the
two forms draw
towards one another, gently touching,
but their forms are ambiguous,
encouraging a more fluid interpretation
of their relationship.
When Moore sited the work in the field,
within sight of his maquette studio, he
was delighted by the way the sheep and
lambs interacted with the sculpture, con-
gregating around its monumental forms
in search of shade.
TORSO WITH POINT
1967 (LH 570)
Moore’s comment on his tendency to
‘Humanise everything, to relate
mountains to people, tree trunks to the
human body’ is powerfully evoked in this
work. The natural, twisted formation of a
tree trunk here takes on the appearance
of a human torso. Moore was
fascinated by the trees that grew around
his house and studios. Shortly
after this work was made, he made a
series of tree drawings.
WOMAN
1957-58, CAST 1960 (LH 439)
Woman, with her exaggerated roundness
and fullness of form, can be seen as an
inventive variation on another of Moore’s
great obsessions: the mother and child.
In many works he explored the
sculptural relationship between two
forms, one small and one large, but he
was also fascinated by the theme on a
human level, and how it had inspired
some of the earliest known sculptures.
Here, he presents a mother-to-be, her
life-giving potential on display in the
form of a rounded belly projecting from
an otherwise concave torso.
GOSLAR WARRIOR
1973-74 (LH 641)
Goslar Warrior is the last of three large-
scale warriors that Moore made during
his career. Although they were made
over a twenty-year period, the works
could be read as a narrative sequence.
The earliest, Warrior with Shield 1953-
54, depicts a wounded soldier, unable to
stand but undefeated, his shield raised
as if to deflect an impending blow. In the
second work, Falling Warrior 1956-57, the
subject is defeated and falling, caught in
the dramatic moment before his body
hits the earth. In Goslar Warrior, the
figure is fallen, his enormous shield
uselessly out-of-reach at his feet. In a
final act of defiance, his head cranes
forward, as if straining to see the face of
his aggressor.
DOUBLE OVAL
1966 (LH 560)
During the 1960s, Moore produced a
series of increasingly abstract and
monumental sculptures in which he
explored a variety of new ideas. Works
from this period include multi-part
sculptures with forms that repeat or
interlock, and so-called ‘knife edge’ works
that incorporate thin, flat forms with sharp
edges. In Double Oval, Moore combines
and develops these interests to create a
work of striking originality.
The inspiration behind Double Oval is not
documented, but it has been suggested
that the idea came from a pair of
scissors half submerged in a bowl of
plaster. Although this interpretation may
seem unusual, Moore did incorporate
seemingly mundane everyday objects in
other works. His post-war textile designs,
for example, feature safety pins, piano
keys and clock hands, and his 1955 series
of wall reliefs include the impressions of
bolts, screws and files.
THREE PIECE
RECLINING FIGURE:
DRAPED
1975 (LH 655)
The three elements of this late, mon-
umental, reclining figure incorporate
smooth and curvaceous passages which
are sharply cut into stump-like forms.
The largest part, a rising chest and neck,
juxtaposes one amputated arm with a
heavily bowed and bulbous counterpart
which merges with the torso. The torso
juts up and outwards towards the centre
of the composition before being bluntly
severed. This treatment is echoed in the
head, resulting in a blank facial plane.
The verticality of this element contrasts
with the horizontal arched ‘skirt’ of the
figure, which shields a separate and
more sinuous ‘leg-form’. The component
parts are carefully spaced across the flat
bronze base.
FAMILY GROUP
1948-49 (LH 269)
In 1947, Moore’s friend John Newson, then
Director of Education for Hertfordshire,
approached him with a proposal: a
sculpture for Barclay School in Stevenage.
In 1949 the commission for Family Group –
Moore’s first life-sized sculpture to be cast
in bronze - was approved. Moore agreed
to make the sculpture at cost price
(materials, casting and transport) on the
proviso that he could make a small edition
to sell. Cast in an edition of six, the
original commission remains at Barclay
School and the other casts are in our col-
lection plus those of: Tate; the Museum of
Modern Art, New York; Hakone Open-Air
Museum, Japan; and Norton Simon Art
Foundation, Pasadena.
UPRIGHT
MOTIVE NO.5
1955-56 (LH 383)
Moore worked with architects
throughout his career: Michael
Rosenauer, Charles Holden, Gordon
Bunshaft and I.M. Pei among others.
While he often considered landscape the
optimum setting for his work, he
nonetheless enjoyed the challenge of
conceiving work for architectural
settings. The upright motives combine
these interests, recalling architectural
columns and the organic growth of trees
and stalagmites. The motives can also
appear ambiguously figurative.
In 1954 Moore worked with architect
Michael Rosenauer on a design for the
English Electric Company Headquarters
in London. He produced eight upright
motive maquettes, which he conceived
as integral parts of the building. The
project was never realised but the
maquettes became the impetus for
Moore’s later series of large upright
motives, numbered one to nine, cast
between 1955 and 1979.
SEATED WOMAN
1958-59, CST 1975 (LH 440)
From the mid-1950s until the early 1960s,
the solitary, seated female figure became
a central theme in Moore’s work. The
subject was not new to him; in the 1920s
and 1930s he developed his
characteristic treatment of monumental
women in a number of drawings and
carvings, in which figures sit solidly on
simple geometric blocks. Moore’s
renewed interest in the theme can be
traced to a commission for the new
headquarters of UNESCO in Paris.
Initially, Moore thought a seated figure
might be suitable and he made a
number of maquettes testing out various
poses. While the final work for
UNESCO was a large reclining figure
(LH 416), his maquettes formed the
basis for later works such as Draped Seated
Woman 1957-58. Moore conceived Seated
Woman in the years immediately following
the Paris commission although it was not
enlarged and cast in bronze until 1975.
SQUARE FORM
WITH CUT
1969 (LH 598)
Square Form with Cut was realised in
three vastly different scales. The original
maquette, just 20 cm high, was
produced in a bronze edition of 9+1.
In 1971, Moore completed Large Square
Form With Cut, a towering creation in
pale marble, over 5 m tall and weighing
180 tonnes. In between the two, Moore
made a version of intermediate size,
which he produced in three different
materials: fibreglass, black marble and
concrete. The concrete version in our
collection is the last work Moore made in
this material, and one of around
thirty concrete sculptures he made in his
lifetime. Explaining his initial
interest in the material in the 1920s, he
said: ‘At the time reinforced concrete
was the new material for architecture. As
I have always been interested in
materials, I thought I ought to learn
about the use of concrete for sculpture in
case I ever wanted to connect a piece of
sculpture with a concrete building.’HENRY MOORE ARCHIVE
The new home of the Henry Moore
Archive was completed in 2016 and
designed by Hugh Broughton Architects.
The new building houses our extensive
collection of archive material under one
roof in a series of state-of-the-art,
climate-controlled stores.
The Archive comprises over three quarters
of a million publications, documents,
images and recordings created and
collected from the artist’s working life to
the present day. It illuminates Moore’s
creativity, passion and curiosity and
documents his influence on 20th and 21st
century art.
The Archive is currently closed to visitors
and researchers, but we hope to reopen in
2021. In the meantime, you can search the
collections via the
online Archive catalogue.
LARGE FIGURE IN A
SHELTER
1985-86 (LH 652c)
In the 1920s and 1930s Moore visited
the armouries of the Wallace Collection
and subsequently produced a series of
works related to helmets. For Moore,
armour was a powerful and exciting
sculptural form, inextricably linked to
human history and the human body,
which aligned with his exploration of the
dynamic between internal and external
space and volume.
Large Figure in a Shelter – Moore’s last
monumental sculpture - was developed
directly from Helmet Head No. 6 (LH 651),
created in 1975, the year the Spanish
dictator Franco died. It is pertinent that
one of the two casts of Large Figure in a
Shelter resides in Guernica, in the Parque
de los Pueblos de Europa.You can also read
