Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Gift of the artist to his daughter Mary Moore before 1960, by whom presented to Tate in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.

This tall bronze sculpture comprises an amorphous column culminating in a bulbous cross. The bronze generally shifts between dark brown and green in colour, with brighter green hues at its high points. It is currently displayed outdoors in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and is installed next to two other sculptures by Moore that possess similar forms and dimensions, Upright Motive No.2 1955–6, cast c.1958–62 (Tate T02275) and Upright Motive No.7 1955–6, cast c.1958–61 (Tate T02276). While all three sculptures can be shown separately, this is a grouping approved by Moore (fig.1).

Moore would have made the original model for this sculpture by applying successive layers of plaster over a supportive armature, probably made using lengths of wood, chicken wire and scrim bandage. The surface of the sculpture evidences the use of a variety of techniques including marks made by adding wet plaster with a spatula (fig.2) and lines incised in the setting surface with pointed tools and serrated edges (fig.3). Moore also treated the hardened plaster like stone, using chisels to carve it and rasps and files to smooth it. In this way he combined the techniques of modelling and carving to produce the finished sculpture.

Moore added further surface detail using the technique of graffito, which involves making lines in the plaster while it is still slightly wet. This is illustrated by the panel on the lower section of the sculpture where vertical lines and circles have been incised into its surface (fig.4). Equally, the semi-circular form that appears directly above the base and the vertical ridges that appear on the opposite side of the column (fig.5) demonstrate how Moore used relief to enhance particular forms.

When the plaster was complete a mould was taken from it so that it could be cast in bronze. This sculpture was cast in an edition of six plus one artist’s copy. Moore had the first four versions cast at Corinthian Bronze Foundry in Cambridgeshire, and then a further three cast at Noack Foundry in West Berlin, with one of these kept as the artist’s copy. Although it is not signed, Tate’s version is the artist’s copy and was probably the last to be cast. The maximum size of any one piece of cast bronze depends upon the size of the crucible at the foundry, as the molten bronze used to make the sculpture must be poured into the mould in one go. In practice this means that bronzes of this size are usually cast in sections and welded together. This sculpture appears to have been divided horizontally into three roughly equal parts, as evidenced by the trace of a horizontal weld line on the side of the sculpture (fig.6). These welds would have been filed and textured with punch tools to match the surrounding bronze surface through a process called ‘chasing’. Although the surface of the bronze can be examined to ascertain where on the sculpture such processes were used, it does not provide definitive proof of the casting technique used.

When the assembly of the bronze had been finished, it was cleaned and coloured using an artificial patina. Chemical solutions would have been applied to the metal surface to cause a reaction that produced coloured compounds. Judging from early photographs it seems that the sculpture was initially dark brown (fig.7). It was gifted to Tate in the summer of 1978 and was displayed there alongside Upright Motive No.2 and Upright Motive No.7 in a formation conceived by Moore. On seeing the display Moore noticed that the three sculptures were patinated differently and suggested that they be returned to the Henry Moore Foundation so that they could all be patinated the same colour. When the three sculptures were returned to Tate they were patinated a uniform brown colour and displayed outside on the lawn where they remained until 1983 when they were relocated to Battersea Park. Soon after being moved vandals broke through security fences around the sculptures and set fire to a canvas covering being used as temporary protection. The fire charred and damaged the patina on the lower area of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross although the sculpture was repaired sufficiently to remain on display in the park with the other two upright motives until 1994, when they were moved to Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross has been displayed in the open air for many years and its original colour has altered gradually from exposure to the weather. Most bronze sculptures displayed outdoors eventually develop a green hue as a result of chemical weathering. This green is often brighter on exposed high points, as the sculpture’s present condition demonstrates (fig.8).

While situated at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), sheep have also affected the appearance of this sculpture. Since its foundation in 1977 YSP has worked with local farmers, allowing flocks of sheep to graze on parts of its 500 acre estate. The sheep have used the sculptures on display as shelters, and their slightly abrasive wool has removed the patina around the base of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross leaving visible golden edges (fig.9).

When the sculpture left the foundry it would have been given a coating of protective wax, which is replaced annually as part of an ongoing maintenance programme. This procedure involves washing the surface to remove dirt deposits and bird lime before the new wax is applied. A black wax has been used for its maintenance in the past, and this has both darkened the patina and left residues in the recesses of the sculpture.

The sculpture is unsigned and fixed to a rectangular bronze base, most likely by bolts from underneath. The base was probably cast using the sand casting technique and then given a smooth finish by applying an abrasive. For stability, outdoor sculptures like this are usually fixed into a concrete foundation underneath the base.

Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross is a tall, vertically-orientated sculpture consisting of two distinct parts: the upper half comprises a loosely cross-shaped mass while the lower half takes the form of a columnar plinth. Although designed to be seen in the round, the side featuring a relief panel with a half moon is conventionally regarded as the front of the sculpture (fig.1).

The upper half of the sculpture resembles a warped Latin cross. The central shaft, which is deeper than it is wide, tapers outwards as it extends upwards from an irregular bulbous form or burr. Approximately two thirds up this shaft are two fin-like, irregular stumps or arms that project almost horizontally from either side of the central axis, which culminates in a narrow but deep, semi-cylindrical shape with domed faces at the front and back. A truncated, rounded swelling protrudes from the front in between the central shaft and the right arm.

The lower section of the sculpture is a tall cuboid, patterned on the front and rear with surface designs. The front side features a rectangular relief with a curved lower edge (fig.2). It is incised with parallel and equidistant vertical lines, two of which (towards the left) have been linked by a series of short horizontal incisions. A circular depression can also be seen towards the lower right of this relief interrupting the lines, which terminate just above a raised crescent, into which another smaller crescent has been etched. Another raised form – a disk with a depression just above its centre – can be seen just above the relief’s curved lower edge, which cuts deeply into the surface but tapers off to the right-hand edge of the cuboid. At the base of the sculpture there are two rectangular indentations of different sizes.

The rear side of the sculpture’s lower half is textured with five vertical ridges and capped with a curved lip (fig.3). Combined with the vertical lines on the facing relief, these features further identify the cuboid with a plinth or column, specifically evoking the fluting of an ionic column.


The sculpture’s lateral surfaces are not patterned with relief designs. However, the different surface textures found on the sculpture are most evident on these side surfaces. The upper part in marked with shallow grooves and cuts while the lower section has been smoothed and then incised with fine cross-hatched lines, probably made with a knife or another sharp tool (fig.4). Moore would have applied these surface textures to the original plaster version knowing that they would be reproduced during the bronze casting process.

Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross is one of a series of vertically-orientated sculptures known as ‘upright motives’ that Moore made between 1955 and 1956. Moore created a total of thirteen small maquettes for individual sculptures in the series, of which five (numbers 1, 2, 5, 7, and 8) were enlarged to full size. In addition to Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross, casts of Upright Motive No.2 1955–6 (Tate T02275) and Upright Motive No.7 1955–6 (Tate T02276) are held in the Tate collection. Discussing Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross in 1968, Moore recalled:

The cataloguer of Moore’s drawings, Ann Garrould, has identified four individual pages of sketches depicting upright motives dating from 1954–6.2 The sketch in the middle right of Upright Motives 1954–6 (fig.5) presents a form similar to Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross in the way that the form has been divided into two sections, with a bulbous upper formation positioned on top of a more structured column below. However, it is unlikely that these drawings were preliminary sketches for specific sculptures. The curator Alan Wilkinson has asserted that ‘there were no preparatory drawings for these works’, and indeed by the mid-1950s – when he created the upright motive series – Moore rarely worked directly from studies on paper, preferring instead to begin each new project by making small three-dimensional models.3

In 1978 Moore described his working practice, saying, ‘I have gradually changed from using preliminary drawings for my sculptures to working from the beginning in three-dimensions. That is, I first make a maquette for any idea I have for a sculpture ... I can hold it in my hand, turning it over to look at it from above, underneath, and in fact from any angle’.4 The plaster maquette for Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross, known as Upright Motive: Maquette No.1, dates from 1955 and was probably made in Moore’s maquette studio in the grounds of his home, Hoglands, at Perry Green in Hertfordshire. Previously the village shop, the building was used by Moore from the early 1950s as a private space in which he could conduct preliminary experiments before moving to the larger studio to develop his work on a larger scale. Moore’s plaster maquette studio was lined with shelves on which his ever growing collection of bones, shells, and pebbles – what he called his ‘library of natural forms’ – was stored.5 Surrounded by these objects, Moore appropriated their shapes when creating his own sculptures. In 1963 he explained to the critic David Sylvester how he worked with found natural objects:

In 1955 Moore was just beginning to develop the working technique he described confidently to Sylvester in 1963. It is likely that the top half of Upright Motive: Maquette No.1 developed from pieces of plaster cast from the impression left by a stone or bone pressed into clay or plasticine. Once these pieces of plaster had hardened Moore could then add and subtract forms and smooth or sharpen edges to make the final plaster maquette. The lower cuboid portion of the maquette was probably made from a piece of solid plaster into which Moore carved his relief designs.

Once Moore was happy with the design of his maquette a full-size plaster version was made. Using the maquette as a template, an armature, possibly made of wood and wire netting would first be constructed. Over this structure layers of plaster were built up and the sculpture would begin to gain mass and form. The full-size plaster of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross would have been created in the White Studio at Hoglands by Moore’s studio assistants, who at the time included Daryll Hill, Peter King, Lenton Parr and Stephen Walker. Moore was able to allocate the bulk of the preliminary work to others because, as curator Julie Summers has noted, the enlargement process was ‘a scientific rather than artistic process’.7

At the foundry the technicians used the plaster original to create hollow moulds into which molten bronze could be poured. Due to its size, the sculpture was probably cast in three sections and then welded together. A welding seam can be distinguished traversing the circumference of the upper section of Tate’s cast (fig.6).

After casting at the foundry the bronze sculpture would have been returned to Moore so that he could examine its quality and make decisions about the patination. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the pre-heated bronze sculpture. In 1968 Moore remarked upon an undated photograph of his studio assistants patinating bronzes from the upright motive series (fig.7), explaining that, ‘my assistants are patinating the upright motifs [sic], to give them the colour and surface quality I wanted. In my sculpture, whilst of course colour counts, it’s not the main thing. Otherwise I would have been a painter’.10 Tate’s copy of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross is predominantly dark brown and black, although some areas have turned green, particularly towards the top of the sculpture. As Moore explained, ‘bronze naturally in the open air (particularly near the sea) will turn with time and the action of the atmosphere to a beautiful green’.11

In his 1965 essay on the Upright Motives, the critic John Russell sought to trace their origins in Moore’s previous work.12 Although at the time Moore was most well known for his horizontally-orientated reclining female figures such as Reclining Figure 1951 (Tate T02270), Russell demonstrated that Moore had subjected the vertical form to consistent, albeit infrequent, examination. From his early wood carving Torso 1927 (fig.8) and Stringed Figure of 1938 to Three Standing Figures 1953 (fig.9), Russell presented a visual chronology of Moore’s upright standing forms to which Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross may be related.13 In the same year the critic Herbert Read agreed that Moore’s upright motives could ‘be regarded as a synthesis of significant forms that had been realised in the previous twenty years of the sculptor’s development’.14 Read identified Moore’s early interest in non-Western art, his surrealist works of the 1930s, and his 1955 architectural commission for the Bouwcentrum, Rotterdam, as contributing to the final schemata of the upright motive series.

In 1955, when he began work on the Upright Motive series, Moore made a unique terracotta version of the striated rectangular relief found on the front of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross (fig.10). Although the small sculpture contains elements not found in the final version – principally the two small round indentations visible at the top – other features are included, such as the column of horizontal striations on the left-hand side. The curator Alan Wilkinson has suggested that the relief and its designs were conceived in a drawing made by Moore in c.1935 (fig.11). The sketch in the upper left-hand corner of this drawing presents a vertical form comprised of vertical parallel lines that terminate at a pair of rounded shapes at the bottom. The page is annotated with the words, ‘New Ireland | strings’, indicating the geographical area where the depicted object was made and, perhaps, the character of the vertical lines.15 New Ireland is a large island in Papua New Guinea and Garrould has suggested that Moore may have sketched the ‘shield or implement whilst on a visit to the Ethnographical department of the British Museum’.16 Although the original source has not been identified, it is known that Moore made regular trips to the museum following his arrival in London in 1921 and used its collection of prehistoric, medieval and non-Western art as a source of inspiration for sculptural ideas throughout his career. In 1980 Moore was invited to identify artworks from the British Museum collection that had influenced his work, and these were then collated for publication in the photographic book Henry Moore at the British Museum (1981).17 Discussing two sculptures from Papua New Guinea included in this book, Moore noted that ‘the Oceanic peoples appear to me to have a more anxious, nervous, over-imaginative view of the world, expressing itself in fantastic, birdlike, beetlelike forms with a nightmarish quality about them’.18 It was perhaps the birdlike qualities Moore identified in art from Papua New Guinea that led him in to draw a lyre bird in 1936 in the shape of the shield-like object, featuring similar parallel lines down its length, a crescent shaped disc, and a circle near the bottom, which he used to denote the bird’s eye (fig.12).

Moore’s engagement with ancient and non-Western art while he was designing his upright motives was not limited to this bird motif. In 1965 he noted that he began work on his maquettes ‘by balancing different forms one above the other – with results rather like the North-West American totem poles’.19 An unnamed critic writing in the Burlington Magazine in 1965 suggested that ‘we can find echoes of their monumentality in Scottish early medieval crosses, in Celtic art and even in ancient Assyrian obelisks. Perhaps the days Moore spent in the British Museum thirty-five years before these sculptures were executed left him with some feeling for the grandeur and strangeness of upright stone monoliths’.20 Later that same year Herbert Read supplemented these references, proposing that prototypes for Moore’s standing totems could be found in the prehistoric standing stones of Stonehenge and Avebury Circle in south-west England and Carnac in Brittany, France.21

Moore first visited Stonehenge as a student in autumn 1921 and retained an interest in the Neolithic standing stones throughout his career, culminating in his Stonehenge lithographs of 1972–3 (see Tate P02169– P02187). According to the art historian Andrew Causey, Moore revisited the site on more than one occasion in the 1950s ‘when his daughter, Mary, was at school nearby’.22 As the art historian Sam Smiles has outlined, by the 1930s a number of artists within Moore’s circle had developed an appeal for the standing stones. Modernist artists including Barbara Hepworth and Paul Nash sought to emulate the forms and values of prehistoric Britain which were deemed to be more expressive than the classicism of the European fine art tradition.23 In a letter to Nash written on 15 September 1933 Moore responded to a query stating, ‘Yes. I’ve seen Stonehenge. Its [sic] very impressive. I’ve read somewhere that certain primitive peoples coming across a large block of stone in their wanderings would worship it as a god – which is easy to understand, for there’s a sense of immense power about a large rough-shaped lump of rock or stone’.24 In their essay examining Moore’s outdoor sculptures, art historians Penelope Curtis and Fiona Russell suggested that ‘by the later 1930s Moore and Hepworth were clearly ready to suggest that their own sculptures were monuments in a lineage of stone monuments of the Neolithic builders, with perhaps a similarly arcane or forgotten purpose. Their sculptures were at once ancient and modern, or, to use the title of Paul Nash’s painting, Equivalents for the Megaliths’ (see Tate T01251).25

Between 1934 and 1939 Moore made a series of drawings presenting standing forms such as Stones in a Landscape 1936 (fig.13). Causey has suggested that a ‘metamorphic principle’ associated with surrealism underpins these drawings, whereby a series of different sized monoliths are given humanoid features.26 For example, the largest standing stone to the right of Stones in a Landscape appears to resemble a face in profile. A heavy brow, recessed eye, projecting nose, mouth and chin can all be made out on the left-hand edge of the stone’s upper half, but by withholding additional details Moore creates ambiguity and uncertainty.

Herbert Read also noted the debt owed by Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross to Moore’s earlier work, stating that ‘the “head” of the Glenkiln Cross has the same blunted cyclopic form as the Composition in carved concrete of 1933 belonging to the British Council or the Corsehill stone Figure of 1933–34’ (fig.14).27 The sculptures identified by Read were made during Moore’s most surrealist phase in the mid-1930s. In his survey of surrealism in Britain, art historian Michel Remy identified Moore as an active member of a group of artists, writers and critics, including Nash, Read and Roland Penrose, who advocated surrealist ideas and motifs during this decade.28 Moore exhibited in a number of surrealist exhibitions throughout the 1930s and Figure 1933–4 and Stones in a Landscape 1936 were displayed in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. The inclusion of these works define, according to Causey, ‘what Moore thought appropriate for a Surrealist exhibition at this time’.29

Read’s identification of the upper section of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross as a head suggests that human, figurative forms may be identified within its bulbous shapes. Moore’s concrete Composition 1933 (fig.15) is generally understood as an amorphous portrait bust, with a head morphing out of an armless torso. Although Composition does not represent a human form with any anatomical accuracy, its associative ties to the figurative are supported by Moore, who in 1932 remarked that ‘all the best sculpture I know is both abstract and representational at the same time’.30 Discussing this figurative undercurrent in Moore’s work, in 1968 the critic John Russell suggested that in his upright motives, Moore was grappling with the problem of how to give the ‘human figure the freedom and the audacity and the manifold reverberation of the abstract idiom’.31 As such, he argued that Moore’s upright motives were ‘altered or “perturbed” objects, in the Surrealist sense’.32

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s Moore continued to explore the varied compositional possibilities of the standing figure. In drawings such as Studies for Standing Figures 1949 (fig.16) the body is broken down into component parts. This method of fragmenting and reconstructing the figure bears an affinity with drawings published by Pablo Picasso under the title An Anatomy 1933 (fig.17). Moore had been aware of Picasso’s work since his student days at Leeds School of Art, and in 1973 reflected that ‘really all my practicing life was as a student, and as a sculptor I have been very conscious of Picasso because he dominated sculpture and painting – even sculpture as well as painting – since Cubism’.33 An Anatomy was originally reproduced in the first issue of the periodical Minotaure, published in Paris in June 1933, and it is probable that Moore saw or bought a copy around the time of its publication.34 In his drawings Picasso presented the human body as an assemblage of precariously balanced shapes and objects. Arches, prisms and cuboids are stacked with shapes recalling ladders, chairs and cogs, reconfiguring the body as a series of interconnected forms in space. Although Moore preferred rounded forms, rather than the hard-edged shapes found in An Anatomy, the technique of building figures from discrete components was put to productive use in his drawings.

In 1960 the art critic Will Grohmann asserted that the upright motives ‘began when Moore was designing the wall for the Bouwcentrum and extended over a good two years’.35 In 1954 Moore was commissioned to design a sculpture for the façade of the Bouwcentrum, an arts venue in Rotterdam.36 In preparation for this commission Moore created ten rectangular maquettes, each presenting a sequence of linear configurations of various forms including square blocks, cones, prisms, shells and pebbles arranged into vertical lines and set in relief against a flat ground. According to the curator Anita Feldman Bennet, Moore created these maquettes ‘by pressing found objects into clay and casting in plaster and bronze the mysterious organic impressions which resulted’.37 However, the presence and repetition of specific, legible forms in the maquettes presents a greater degree of structure and control than Feldman Bennet’s description of ‘mysterious organic impressions’ implies. The third column on the left of Wall Relief: Maquette No.2 1955 (fig.18), for instance, features a striated vertical panel with a half-moon shape reminiscent of the design used on Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross.

The final work for the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam was constructed in brick and comprised rounded, organic shapes framed by vertical striations on both sides and geometric blocks above and below. According to John Russell, Moore’s relief works were, ‘abstract arrangements that had a formal life of their own: a vigorous, chunky, all-purpose vitality that seemed to burst out of the columnar structure and set off all manner of associations. They were not so much reliefs as free-standing sculptures that seemed to have sunk into the body of the wall’.38 Following a discussion with Moore on 12 December 1980, Tate curator Richard Morphet reported that the Bouwcentrum commission ‘led to the idea of releasing the forms from their incorporation in the fabric of the wall so that they become free-standing’.39

The relationship between Upright Motive No.1 Glenkiln Cross and Moore’s earlier commission for the Bouwcentrum was noted in some of the earliest literature on the upright motive series.40 However, in 1988 the curator Peyton Skipwith identified another architectural commission directly related to Upright Motive No.1 Glenkiln Cross.41 The year before Moore started work on the maquettes for the upright motives, and following his commission to create a sculpture for the new Olivetti building in Milan, Moore was invited by the architect Michael Rosenauer to collaborate on a design for an extension to Marconi House, the headquarters of the English Electric Company on the Strand in London. For this project Moore made a series of six maquettes of vertical forms to be positioned on the building’s façade. Significantly, three of these forms utilised the same rectangular striated relief with half-moon found on the front of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross (fig.19). Nine competing designs for the new building were judged on 14 February 1955 and the commission was awarded to Gordon Tait. Skipwith relates that ‘as Rosenauer did not win the competition the scheme did not reach fruition’.42 Consequently, Moore’s designs were never enlarged, leaving him free to reuse his ideas for the vertical reliefs elsewhere.

In 1960 Will Grohmann provided the first detailed examination of Moore’s upright motives, observing that the series was ‘still almost unknown, and yet something like a legend has formed around them’.43 This ‘legendary’ aspect of the sculptures may have stemmed from interpretations of their ambiguous Christological symbolism, which were themselves informed by the placement of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross on a hilltop in rural Scotland where the sculpture evoked an ancient Celtic cross or primeval standing stone (fig.20).

In 1956 the first cast of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross was acquired by W.J. Keswick for his estate, Glenkiln, in Dumfriesshire, where two other sculptures by Moore – Standing Figure 1950 and King and Queen 1952–3 (Tate T00228) – were also located.44 According to Keswick’s nephew, John McEwen, Moore decided to make the sculpture after he and Keswick had been for a walk on the estate and saw ‘the distant figure of a shepherd’ appear over the crest of a hill that ‘commanded a view over the whole glen’, which they agreed would make an excellent site for a sculpture.45

Although the resulting work is now known as Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross, McEwan asserts that the original title of the work was simply Glenkiln Cross, and that it acquired its full title later in order to place it within the upright motive series. This assertion is corroborated by the sculpture’s presentation as Glenkiln Cross in a number of exhibitions between 1959 and 1960, including Documenta 2 in Kassel in 1959 and Moore’s solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1960. In his review of the outdoor exhibition Sculpture in the Open Air, held in Battersea Park, London, in 1960, which included a cast of the sculpture, the critic Robert Melville noted that ‘it gets its name from Glenkiln Farm at Shawhead in Scotland, where the first cast stands’.46 For McEwan, Glenkiln Cross, as ‘the first Upright Motive’, was ‘indisputably conceived as a single work’.47

In 1960 Moore explained that Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross is ‘meant to be a rudimentary worn-down cross – the cross and the figure on the cross being merged together’.48 Responding to this statement Melville reflected that:

Moore was not a practising Christian, although he had made religious artworks for Christian settings before, most notably his Madonna and Child 1943–4 for St Matthew’s Church in Northampton, and as his letter of 1933 to Paul Nash revealed, he was aware of the symbolic power of religious imagery.50 In Grohmann’s interpretation of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross he suggested that although the sculpture may not represent Christian imagery, it did possess religious or symbolic power:

According to Grohmann, Moore modified the Christian symbol of the crucifix to create a powerful and primal standing form. Although Stonehenge was overlooked by Grohmann, the critic did draw parallels between the sculpture and the Celtic menhirs and Christian standing stones found in Scotland.52 This interpretation was in keeping with contemporaneous scholarship on Moore, which tended to emphasise his interest in ‘primitive’ art and spirituality. For example, in 1958 the critic J.P. Hodin argued that Moore’s work should be understood in relation to the natural landscape, human consciousness and archaic and primitive art.53 That same year Moore himself noted that ‘the great (the continual everlasting) problem (for me) is to combine sculptural form (power) with human sensitivity and meaning, to try and keep the Primitive Power with humanist content’.54 In his conclusion, Grohmann remarked that the individual elements of the sculpture combine in a ‘divine appearance and become spiritual expressions’.55

In his own account of the upright motives Herbert Read located their meaning not in spirituality but in psychology: ‘the formal origins and psychological significance of the Glenkiln Cross and other Upright Motives lie within the gradual unfolding of Moore’s own archetypal vision’.56 Read was an expert on the psychological theories of Carl Jung, who advanced the notion of an archetype as a pervasive idea, image or symbol that forms part of humanity’s collective unconscious. For Read, Moore’s upright motives exist beyond the realm of naturalistic representation or organised religious symbolism, and appeal to a collective human sensibility that is both innate and universal.57 In order to support his assertion Read cited an excerpt of Jung’s 1931 essay, ‘On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry’:

Read explained:

The experience of situating this work and others outside at Glenkiln directly informed Moore’s preference for placing his sculptures in an outdoor environment. In 1968 he reflected that ‘in Scotland I think the single cross is probably better placed: seen from across the moor your attention is drawn towards it as if X marks the spot. From a distance a cross form stands out so much more than any other form’.60 Although Moore’s early supporter Kenneth Clark was initially hostile to the idea of placing his sculptures outside – and not simply outside, but in a natural landscape – Moore nonetheless came to the view that the open sky served as the optimal backdrop for his work. It was perhaps for this reason that he kept photographs of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross, King and Queen 1952–3 and Standing Figure 1950 positioned at Glenkiln pinned to notice boards in his studio. Clark came to agree with Moore, writing in 1977 that ‘the supreme examples of siting Moore’s work are Tony Keswick’s placements of four pieces on his sheep farm at Glenkiln in Dumfriesshire, Scotland ... everyone who sees the works in this setting comes away deeply moved ... The siting of the Glenkiln pieces is what one might call a Wordsworthian use of sculpture’.61

After the first cast was erected at Glenkiln in 1956 other casts of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross were exhibited internationally, most notably in the second Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 1959. Tate’s cast was exhibited in Sculpture in the Open Air in Battersea Park in 1960, where, according to Melville, ‘it stood apart and aloof, estranged by its tallness and its incomparable grandeur’.62 The sculpture was located near works by Reg Butler and Hubert Dalwood, and was framed by trees.63 However, at his solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960, Tate’s Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross was exhibited between two other sculptures from the series, Upright Motive No.2 and Upright Motive No.7. In his review of the exhibition for the Observer, Nevile Wallis wrote that:

It is likely that Wallis’s response to the configuration of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross alongside two other Upright Motives was coloured by knowledge of the sculpture’s isolated placement at Glenkiln. However, Moore later suggested that the triptych arrangement had been intended from the time of their casting. In 1965 he explained that ‘when I came to carry out some of these maquettes in their final full size, three of them grouped themselves together’. ⁶⁵

In 1965 the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo purchased examples of each of the three upright motives exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery and invited Moore to design a pedestal for their display outside (fig.21). The sculptures were unveiled in April 1965 and at this time Moore not only indicated that the sculptures could be naturally grouped together, but stated that ‘in my mind, [they] assumed the aspect of a crucifixion scene as though framed against the sky above Golgotha – (But I do not especially expect others to find this symbolism in the group)’.66 According to Christian belief, Golgotha was the hilltop site outside Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was crucified, flanked by two thieves. In 1968 Russell analysed Moore’s statement, suggesting that the phrase ‘in my mind’ was central to understanding Moore’s relationship with both his work and his audience.67 Russell noted that Moore rarely made direct statements about the meaning of his work and that in this instance Moore personalised his interpretation, stressing that he did not expect others to find Christian symbolism in the work.68 Russell himself concluded that ‘the combination of the three Motives does not seem to me necessarily to have anything to do with the Crucifixion’.69 Nonetheless, Moore returned to these religious interpretations in 1968, saying that ‘I often work in threes when relating things. Take the symbolic cross motif. I realised that, whenever it was placed with others, it had to be in the middle. When placed between two others, the three became a crucifixion group’.70

Moore’s sculptures may also be understood in relation to the engagement of religious themes and subjects by artists working at the same time. In 1965 a critic writing in the Burlington Magazine observed that Moore’s upright motives were created ‘at roughly the same time as Graham Sutherland was experimenting with the same type of figure in his paintings’.71 However, it was not until 1998 that this reference to the British painter Sutherland was explored further. In her book New Art / New World: British Art in Postwar Society the art historian Margaret Garlake compared Moore’s upright motives with contemporary works by Sutherland, remarking that the triptych of sculptures produced ‘a set of variations on natural forms that were congruent with Christian imagery in a manner comprable to Sutherland’s standing forms’.72 For example, in paintings such as Standing Forms II 1952 (Tate T03113; fig.22), Sutherland depicted three vertical forms comprised of interlocking organic shapes, some of which are positioned on plinths. These associations are strengthened by the fact that Moore knew Sutherland’s work well. Not only was he present at the unveiling of Sutherland’s Crucifixion 1946 at St Matthew’s Church in Northampton (which had also commissioned Moore’s Madonna and Child 1943–4), but he also exhibited alongside Sutherland in the British Pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale. In addition to Sutherland, the paintings of Francis Bacon have also been thought to have influenced the forms that appear in Moore’s sculptures in the early to mid-1950s. In the catalogue for Moore’s posthumous exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, in 1988, the curator Susan Compton proposed that the bulbous torsos and truncated limbs of the figures in Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c.1944 (Tate N06171) may have informed the upper portion of Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross.73 It is probable that Moore viewed Bacon’s painting when it was acquired by Tate in 1953, when Moore was a trustee of the gallery.

In 1972 Moore returned to Upright Motive: No.1 Glenkiln Cross, producing two etchings of the sculpture (fig.23). Although Moore had created graphic works on paper throughout his career, he began etching and printmaking with a new level of consistency in the early 1970s. When the Bourne Maquette Studio was built on the grounds of his home in 1970, Moore turned his old maquette studio into a dedicated space for etching and experimented with the medium at length. Examples of the works produced during this period were presented to the Tate by the artist in 1975 (Tate P02163 and P02164).

The artist’s daughter, Mary Danowski (née Moore), presented Upright Motive No.1 Glenkiln Cross 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’.74 Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross was displayed between Upright Motive No.2 and Upright Motive No.7 in the Duveen Galleries during the exhibition, and photographs taken while they were on display indicate that the three sculptures all had different patinas (fig.24). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.75 At the close of the exhibition in late August 1978 the Director of Tate Norman Reid reflected in a letter to Moore’s daughter 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’.76

Following the exhibition the three upright motive sculptures were returned to Moore. In a letter to Moore’s secretary Betty Tinsley dated 25 July 1978, Ruth Rattenbury, Assistant Keeper of the Collection, itemised a number of works to be returned to the artist for repairs, and of the three upright motives noted that, ‘Mr Moore said that he would have them treated so that they were all the same colour’.77 In May 1979 the sculptures were returned to Tate and installed on a specially designed base on the lawn in front of the gallery. It is evident from the photographs taken of the installation at the time that the sculptures no longer displayed the variations in colour as they had previously (fig.25).

All three upright motive sculptures in the Tate collection remained on display on the Tate lawn until April 1983 when they were relocated to the nearby Battersea Park. On 26 May Tate was notified that vandals had breached the security fence surrounding the sculptures, which were still in the process of being installed, and had set fire to the protective canvas covering Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross and Upright Motive No.7. As a result the patina and surface of the lower areas of the two sculptures were charred.78 Despite this inauspicious start, the installation of the three upright motives continued as planned, and they were positioned in a prominent position on top of a raised incline. Apart from being removed temporarily for display at the Royal Academy of Arts and at Tate in 1988 and 1992 respectively, the sculptures remained at Battersea Park until October 1994. That month Upright Motive No.2 was forcefully rocked by vandals until it fell over and the decision was made to permanently remove all three of the upright motives from the park. They were subsequently placed on long-term loan to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield (fig.26).

The other six bronze casts of the sculpture are held at the Glenkiln Estate, Shawhead; the Sprengel Museum, Hannover; the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Folkwang Museum, Essen; and the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth. The full-size original plaster for Upright Motive No. 1: Glenkiln Cross is in the Moore Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. As well as the Kröller-Müller Museum and Tate, the Amon Carter Museum also owns casts of Upright Motive No.2 and Upright Motive No.7. There they are arranged together on a black granite base designed by Philip Johnson, architect of the museum.