Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

Presented by the artist to Tate in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift.

This is a large bronze sculpture of a seated woman mounted on a rectangular bronze base. The figure does not possess any arms and her legs appear to be truncated at the knee. Both the figure and the base are patinated a deep, vivid green.

The bronze would have been cast from a mould taken from an original plaster version of the sculpture (fig.1). A plaster of this size would have been built up over an internal armature constructed most likely from lengths of wood and chicken wire draped with scrim. Wet plaster would have been applied to this structure, gradually building up the form of the figure, which, once completed, would have been textured by Moore using a range of tools and techniques. Areas on the surface of the bronze show how Moore used a spatula to apply the wet plaster, while striated marks would have been made once the plaster had hardened by cutting into the surface with surform blades and gouges. Moore sometimes created different textures to distinguish certain forms and areas of the sculpture. For example, in the arm sockets the plaster has been left rough and deeply pitted, whereas the surrounding surfaces of the body are smoother and delicately striated (fig.2).

Once it was finished the plaster was sent to the Noack Foundry in West Berlin to be cast in bronze. It was common practice for the foundry to cut plasters of this size into sections so that smaller, more straightforward moulds could be created. Casting a sculpture in sections also allowed the foundry to use a smaller crucible, which made the pouring of molten bronze into the moulds easier to control, and reduced the risk of faults and imperfections in the resulting casts. Residual traces of casting investment are visible in crevices in the bronze, suggesting that the sculpture was cast using the traditional lost wax process (fig.3).

After they were cast the individual sections would have been welded together to form the sculpture. Any weld lines would be carefully filed down and textured with punches to integrate them with the surrounding surface. This process is called ‘chasing’ and is also used to disguise repairs to the bronze, such as the square outline in the cleft of the buttocks (fig.4). The base was cast separately and fixed to the sculpture using bolts attached from the underside. Although it has not been possible to examine the underside of the base, the inspection of bases of similar sculptures by Moore has shown them to have been sand cast. Before the sculpture left the foundry it would have been cleaned, but otherwise there are no signs of any other post-cast finishing and the original marks that Moore made in the plaster have been faithfully reproduced in the bronze.

Freshly cast bronze is usually coloured by means of a process called artificial patination. This involves the application of chemical solutions to the surface, which react with the bronze to produce coloured compounds. This sculpture has a vivid green patina variegated with shades of brown. Patinas are often made up of a number of different layers, and in this case it is likely that the brown colour was initially applied to the bronze, possibly using a chemical like potassium polysulphide, before a green layer was applied over it. Many different patina recipes can be used to produce green colours on bronze, but they often contain mixtures of copper and ammonium salts. The quality of this patina suggests that the solution was applied cold and stippled onto the surface with a brush. Successive applications would have been left to dry so that they eventually developed a dense green colour. The surface was then given a coat of protective wax, which is often used to build more colour onto the surface and in this case was probably tinted brown.

The sculpture is generally in good condition, although the edges of the base and the knees of the figure are a darker brown than the rest of the sculpture. This suggests that the green patina has been worn away in these areas by repeated handling. The artist’s signature ‘Moore’ has been inscribed into the top of the base along with the edition number ‘0/0’ (fig.5), indicating that this was the artist’s copy. The foundry mark ‘GUSS: H.NOACK.BERLIN’ has been stamped on one side of the base, immediately underneath the signature (fig.6).

Woman 1957–8 is one of the last in a series of bronze sculptures of seated women that Henry Moore made in the 1950s. This naked figure, presented sitting upright on a plinth, has a large, bulbous torso and a disproportionately small head, but what is most striking is that it has no arms, while its legs resemble stumps and appear to have been truncated at the knees.

The figure’s elliptical head is turned to the right and is roughly the same height and width as the neck, which from certain angles appears to be pulled back, slightly lifting the chin (fig.1). A long, prismatic nose runs down the middle of the face, on either side of which eyes of different shapes and sizes have been defined. A single incision or scar runs parallel to the left-hand edge of the nose and a concave depression appears on the right side of the forehead. As with many of Moore’s female figures, Woman has a distinct mass of hair comprising two buns at the rear and a rounded oblong extending diagonally across the left side of the head.

The upper half of the torso is almost wholly formed by two enormous breasts, while the lower half is defined by a prominent central ridge (fig.2). The left breast is larger than the right and both project further than the ridge below. Circular incisions have been made on the breasts and ridge to signify nipples and the navel respectively. The mass of the rounded belly is emphasised by the concave sweep of the left hip and the torso as a whole is twisted slightly so that the broad, flat shoulders are oriented to the right. The shoulder sockets on either side of the torso are heavily textured with gouges. In contrast, the surrounding surfaces are more lightly textured, which gives the impression that the figure once had arms and that they were forcibly amputated (fig.3).

The figure’s thighs extend from the hips at right angles to the torso and form an arched canopy over a tunnelled space beneath. Although they are joined at the knees, two thighs can be distinguished due to a hole in the sculpture’s lap. While the left thigh projects horizontally beyond the edge of the base and terminates in a rounded edge just above the knee, the right thigh is thinner at the hip but expands into a bulbous, bent knee, while a short stump extends downwards, perhaps denoting a calf (fig.4). The legs have rounded ends which, unlike the ragged shoulder sockets, suggest that they are the result of a natural deformation.

The rear side is flat, with no protrusions or undulations apart from two rounded buttocks, which are flattened where they meet the base (fig.5). The left hip and buttock are slightly raised and push out to the side. An arched space between the buttocks makes it possible to see through the sculpture to the other side.

It is likely that Woman developed from a series of drawings executed by Moore in the mid-1950s. Works such as Ideas for Sculpture: Three Seated Figures c.1938, c.1956 (fig.6) illustrate how Moore assessed the formal possibilities of the seated figure. Although Moore dated this drawing to 1958, Ann Garrould, who compiled the catalogue raisonné of his drawings, has suggested that it was probably made earlier and dated in error retrospectively.1 In the sketches appearing toward the upper left of this page Moore was evidently experimenting with the forms of limbless figures. However, it should be noted that during the later 1950s small three-dimensional models or maquettes began to displace drawings as Moore’s primary means of determining the design of his sculptures.

Moore made the plaster maquette for Woman in 1956, most likely in the small studio in the grounds of his home, Hoglands, at Perry Green in Hertfordshire. Formerly the village shop, the building was used by Moore in the 1950s and 1960s as a private space in which to test out his ideas in three dimensions. Having created his maquette, Moore would have then used it as the template for his large-scale sculpture, which was begun the following year. By systematically charting and measuring specific points on its surface using grids and set-squares, it was possible to enlarge the maquette in plaster while retaining its original proportions. This process was probably carried out in the White Studio at Hoglands or, weather permitting, on the studio terrace. Much of the preliminary enlargement work would have been undertaken by one or more of Moore’s sculpture assistants, who in 1957 included Geoffrey Harris, Daryll Hill, Maurice Lowe and Stephen Rich.

In order to create the full-scale plaster version of Woman Moore and his assistants would have first constructed an armature from lengths of wood and wire netting to the required size and shape of the sculpture. The armature would have then been wrapped in scrim, a bandage-like fabric soaked in wet plaster. Once this layer of scrim had dried, additional layers of plaster could then be applied to it and built up to the required depth. Moore found plaster to be a very useful material because it could be ‘both built up, as in modelling, or cut down, in the way you carve stone or wood’.2 It is likely that Moore applied the last few layers of plaster, making amendments to the form where necessary (fig.7). Although the full-size plaster was enlarged from the maquette, Moore made changes to the sculpture during the scaling-up process. Most prominently, the sharply-pointed, almost conical breasts and belly of the maquette have been softened and rounded in the enlarged version. The proportions of the head in relation to the body are also much smaller in the maquette. Moore also worked into the surface of the full-size sculpture using an array of tools including trowels, axes and cheese-graters. These tools would have been used to create different types of markings, grooves and cuts depending on the wetness of the plaster. This is how the mottled textures and short, parallel incisions found on the surface of the bronze would have been produced (fig.8).

Once the full-size plaster version was complete it was sent to a professional foundry to be cast in bronze. Tate’s version of Woman was cast at the Noack Foundry in West Berlin, the name of which is stamped on the edge of the base (fig.9). During the 1950s and early 1960s Moore used a number of different foundries in London and Paris, but started working with Noack in 1958 following an introduction by the art dealer Harry Fischer of Marlborough Fine Art, London.3 The first and second casts of Woman were produced at the Art Bronze Foundry in London, but after being introduced to Noack Moore decided to complete the edition at the Berlin foundry. In 1967 Moore stated, ‘I use the Noack foundry for casting most of my work because in my opinion, Noack is the best bronze founder I know ... Also, the Noack foundry is reliable in all ways – in keeping to dates of delivery – and in sustaining the quality of their work’.4 Traces of casting investment can be detected on the bronze surface suggesting that it was cast using the lost wax technique.5

Once the work was complete at the foundry the bronze sculpture was returned to Moore so that he could inspect the quality of the casting and select a patina. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the bronze surface. Woman has a vibrant green patina, which upon close inspection is made up of a range of brighter and darker tones (fig.10). Brighter greens can be found on the upper chest and thighs, while darker tones have been applied to the concave areas of the torso. Moore explained to the critic David Sylvester in 1963 that ‘one tries with any patina to help the form of a sculpture rather than to obscure it’.6 Moore went on to compare the patina of a sculpture to a person’s skin, suggesting that if a girl ‘has a bad complexion ... you don’t notice how beautiful she may be’.7

According to Moore’s biographer Donald Hall, Woman is directly related to Seated Woman 1957 (Tate T02279; fig.11), which immediately preceded it. In 1966 Hall wrote:

Discussing Woman in 1968, Moore himself stated:

In 1926 Moore made a series of sketches of a small Palaeolithic sculpture, then known as the Venus of Grimaldi and subsequently called the Venus of Menton (fig.12). In these drawings, such as Study after ‘Venus of Grimaldi’ 1926 (fig.13), Moore appears to have devoted significant attention to reproducing the exaggerated size and roundness of the figure’s breasts and hips. Moore’s sketches were based on a reproduction of the ancient sculpture in the scholar Herbert Kuhn’s book Die Kunst der Primitiven (1923), which Moore is known to have consulted.10 Echoing Moore’s acknowledgement of the influence of the Palaeolithic Venus, in 1987 the curator Alan Wilkinson stated that ‘Woman is a mid-twentieth-century descendent of some of the earliest works of art in the world, the prehistoric sculptures of fertility goddesses’.11 He went on to identify Moore’s sculpture as ‘one of the most potent images of fertility produced in the twentieth century’.12

Moore’s interest in the Venus of Grimaldi can be contextualised with reference to a broad tendency in early twentieth-century European modern art known as ‘primitivism’. Primitivism is a term used by art historians to describe modern art that sought to emulate the forms and values of non-Western or ancient art, which were deemed to be more emotionally or spiritually authentic than the classicism of the European fine art tradition. Moore’s interest in non-Western and ancient cultures dates from 1920, when he read Roger Fry’s influential book Vision and Design (1920) while he was a student at Leeds School of Art. Fry was a respected art critic and Vision and Design included chapters on African, Islamic and ancient American art. He proposed that the aesthetic experiences generated by non-Western art possessed an authenticity and directness that academic European art, with its focus on anatomical accuracy and technical virtuosity, had lost.

In 1959 the German psychologist Erich Neumann aligned Moore’s later sculptures of rotund women with the artistic trope of the fertility goddess. He argued that ‘the achetype of the Great Mother around which Moore’s work revolves has not only been an object of veneration all over the world since the remotest times but was always, for that very reason, a subject for artistic representation as well’.13 Neumann defined the ‘Great Mother’ as the symbolic core of ancient societies, providing ‘nourishment, shelter and security’ and presiding as ‘the mistress of life and fertility’.14 He argued that ‘the sovereign power of motherhood determined the earliest phase of man’s development, and only later, with the growth of consciousness, was it superseded and overlaid by the significance of the father and the patriarchal values connected with the father archetype’.15 Neumann suggested that Moore’s attempt to readdress the ‘Great Mother’ archetype provided evidence that ‘a new shift of values is beginning, and with the gradual decay of the patriarchal canon we can discern a new emergence of the matriarchal world in the consciousness of Western man’.16 However, in 1977 the curator Alan Bowness offered a contrasting view to these generalised accounts of the nourishment and security offered by Moore’s large women. Specifically discussing Woman, Bowness suggested that the base upon which the figure sits intentionally creates a distance between the viewer and the figure. He concluded that Moore’s figure was ‘close to being drained of humanity ... almost too impersonal and withdrawn’.17

Nonetheless, building on the observations of Neumann’s landmark text, the art historian Anne Wagner proposed in 1999 that the crowning subject of Moore’s art is ‘the female body as both sensual and generative form’, focusing on the tactile quality and life-giving associations afforded to the breasts of Moore’s figures.18 Wagner supported her identification of breasts as one of Moore’s major preoccupations with reference to a 1925 pencil drawing titled Studies on the Theme of Bust of a Woman at Her Toilet (fig.14). The drawing comprises a series of studies of a female torso with large, undulating breasts. In the two sketches in the lower half of the page the woman’s head has been omitted with Moore concentrating on the weighty forms and erect nipples of the breasts. Wagner observed that:

Although Moore was generally reticent about the erotic undertones of his work, in 1974 he stated that ‘our own bodies are the basis of our understanding of the three-dimensional world. Everybody’s appreciation of form is also based on the appreciation of sex’.20 He elaborated upon this topic in 1983, saying:

In 1960 the critic Will Grohmann identified two kinds of seated figure in Moore’s work. The first, he argued, conveyed repose and contemplation, while the second expressed ‘the moment before rising, jumping up, going into action’.22 Grohmann suggested that ‘the relaxed figures tend towards the classical, and the tense ones toward the demonic’.23 According to Grohmann, Woman can be regarded as ‘demonic’ in that, ‘the demonic figures ... are continuations of the destroyed and destroying themes that followed the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1950s, except that this time the conception is not based on hollow forms and an open framework, but on fully three-dimensional shapes that have been subjected to distortions that exercise a shock effect’.24

Early in its history Woman was variously known as ‘Torso’, ‘Seated Torso’ and ‘Parze’, with the version held in the Israel Museum still exhibited under the title Woman (Seated Torso, Parze). ‘Parze’ is the German word for ‘Fates’ and Grohmann, possibly prompted by this title, noted that he was tempted to call the sculpture ‘Fate’ but observed that:

While Moore’s Warrior with Shield 1953–4 (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) presents the body of a mutilated figure, in Grohmann’s interpretation the absence of limbs in Woman does not indicate bodily trauma. Rather, he suggested that the body of Woman is offered as a complete, unified form and thus a powerful alternative physical reality.

Woman was presented by Henry Moore to the Tate Gallery in 1978 as part of the Henry Moore Gift, which comprised thirty-six sculptures including works in bronze, marble and plaster. Prior to its delivery to Tate Woman was included in a retrospective exhibition celebrating Moore’s eightieth birthday at Cartwright Hall in Bradford. The show was held between April and June 1978, and Woman was placed outside on a specially designed plinth (fig.15).

Woman was transported directly from Cartwright Hall to the Tate Gallery, where it was displayed in a major exhibition alongside the other thirty-five sculptures constituting the Henry Moore Gift. 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’.26 Woman was exhibited in gallery fifty-two alongside Falling Warrior 1956–7 (Tate T02278) and Seated Woman 1957 (Tate T02279; fig.16). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.27 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’.28

Woman was cast in an edition of eight plus one artist’s cast. Tate’s version is stamped with the artist’s signature and the edition number ‘0/0’, indicating that it was originally the artist’s copy (fig.17). Other casts are held in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs; Clos Pegase Winery, Napa Valley; Portland Art Museum, Portland; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal; and the British Council, London. Another bronze cast is housed with the original plaster in the Moore Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.