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, three-part bronze sculpture of a reclining figure positioned on a rectangular base. Each part of the sculpture is fixed with threaded bolts from underneath the base: two at the end denoting the head, three in the central section, and three at the end denoting the feet. The head section rests on the central section but there is no evidence of a join (fig.1). Two holes on each of the long sides of the base accommodate specialist eye bolts that allow the sculpture to be safely lifted into position (fig.2).

Moore would have made the original model for this sculpture by building up successive layers of wet plaster over a supportive armature, probably made using a combination of lengths of wood and scrim bandage. Close examination of the surface shows how Moore carefully created the smooth surface texture by using a range of implements from fine pointed tools to surforms or graters. On the head section a more craggy texture has been achieved by making deep gouges in the plaster.

A mould would have been taken from the completed plaster model that would then be used to make a hollow cast in bronze. This sculpture was cast in an edition of six plus one artist’s copy. Tate’s copy was cast at the Noack Foundry in West Berlin along with three others while the remaining three were cast at a foundry in London. Examination of the surface reveals the presence of casting investment in the crevices (fig.3), which suggests that the sculpture was cast using the lost wax method, although it is probable that the base was sand cast. Large sculptures such as this would have been cast in sections and assembled by welding them together to form the whole. The welds have been carefully filed down and textured to match the surrounding surface using a range of small punch tools, a process known as ‘chasing’. After casting the surface of the bronze was cleaned but there was no further finishing so that the texture applied to the original plaster is clearly visible.


The finished sculpture was artificially patinated to colour the surface and to help disguise welds and repairs. This process involved applying chemical solutions to the bronze that reacted with the metal to create coloured compounds. In this case the patina on both the sculpture and the base is a dark, variegated brown with reddish brown and dark green accents (figs.4 and 5), an effect that was probably achieved by applying at least three different chemical solutions in varying concentrations.

The artist’s signature and edition number ‘Moore 0/6’, along with the founder’s mark ‘H.NOACK BERLIN’, are visible on the central foot close to where it meets the base (fig.6).

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop was made in 1963 and comprises three separate bronze segments positioned on a bronze base that together may be understood to represent a reclining human figure. The tallest section appears to represent a head and neck, implying that the smaller central section represents a torso, while the third section in the arrangement occupies the position of the figure’s legs. Although the gender of the figure is unspecified, Moore’s multi-piece reclining figures are usually regarded as female. This sculpture is the second in a series of three-piece works created during the 1960s, and is closely related to the earlier Three Piece Reclining Figure No.1 1961–2 (Tate T02289).

The head of the figure does not possess any naturalistic facial features but can be recognized due to its position within the composition. It is denoted by a thin, flat shape that protrudes upwards at an angle from a diagonally orientated tubular column representing the spine, which rests on the base (fig.1). A rounded, shelf-like form, which could be shoulders, breasts or the sternum, extends horizontally towards the central section of the sculpture on which it rests, balancing at two points. The central piece is the shortest in height of the three sections but the longest in length (fig.2). Two short appendages separated by a shallow arch support one end of a thick upper surface that curves downwards elegantly from the shoulders towards the base, creating an arch underneath. At the point where it meets the base this upper surface expands in thickness before rising back upwards to create a tilted, concave top that aligns neatly with the leg section. This piece also rests on the base at three points that rise upwards to two peaks, which may be understood as knees (fig.3). In between the supporting legs are two triangular arches that seem to echo the trough carved out between the knees above and which, like the head, appear to lean towards one side.

When seen from the side, a truncated protrusion appears to jut out from behind the knees towards the central piece, accentuating the gap between these two parts (fig.4). However, from the same viewpoint it is evident that all of the pieces appear to lean forwards at a diagonal angle, unifying the individual parts in a collective directional pull. The pieces are also connected by the sweep of a continuous curved line that can be traced along the length of the figure from the head to the knee, bridging the gaps between each section.

Moore developed his ideas for his three-piece sculptures with a series of small maquettes. By the early 1960s Moore had moved away from making preliminary drawings for his sculptures and had started making small three-dimensional models in plaster and other malleable materials. It is probable that he made the maquette for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop in the maquette studio on the grounds of his home, Hoglands, at Perry Green in Hertfordshire. This studio was lined with shelves displaying Moore’s ever growing collection of found bones, shells and flint stones, the shapes of which often served as starting points for Moore’s formal experiments in three dimensions. In 1967 Moore explained, ‘when I study a bone, I look for its human implications. Taste is not the guide. I’m not interested in the niceties of a shape’.1 A few years earlier Moore had explained to the critic David Sylvester how exactly he worked with these natural objects:

Moore made numerous maquettes for three-piece sculptures between 1961 and 1963 using this technique. In 1964 he noted, ‘I make all my original models in ordinary plaster. Modern synthetic plasters don’t interest me’.3 Although some of these maquettes, such as Three Piece Reclining Figure: Maquette No.1 1961 (fig.5), were cast in bronze as small table-top sculptures, not all of them were scaled up to full size. Moore explained:

The only pieces of the original small maquette for Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop that have survived are the head and central pieces, which are held in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation (fig.6). The maquette was not cast in bronze and it is not known whether Moore created an intermediary working model before scaling it up to full size. Either way, the enlargement process would have involved charting and measuring specific points on the surface of the maquette to ensure the sculpture was scaled up accurately. This probably would have been carried out in the White Studio at Hoglands and undertaken by one or more of Moore’s sculpture assistants, who in 1963 included Geoffrey Greetham, Robert Holding, Roland Piché, Ron Robertson-Swann and Isaac Witkin.

In order to make the full-size plaster from which the bronze would be cast, Moore and his assistants would have initially constructed an armature to the required size and shape for each section of the sculpture. The armature would have been made up of numerous lengths of wood and possibly chicken wire, and then draped in scrim, a bandage like fabric. Successive layers of plaster could then be applied to the structure, while the interior of the armature remained hollow. Moore’s assistants would have done much of this work, building up layers of plaster over the armature and scrim until only a short section of each armature rod was exposed. The armature served not only a structural purpose, but was also used to facilitate the enlargement process, with the end of each rod corresponding to a precise point on the surface of the sculpture. Moore explained, ‘once they [the assistants] have brought the work within an inch or so of the measurements I intend it to be, I take it over, and then it becomes a thing I’m working on as it would if I had brought it to that stage myself’.5 After modelling the sculpture to the required shape and form, Moore could then concentrate on the surface texture. Using an array of tools – including spatulas, cheese graters and chisels – Moore could create different types of markings, grooves and cuts depending on the wetness of the plaster. 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’.6 The surface texture of the plaster was captured in the casting process and an examination of the bronze surface of this sculpture shows that Moore created a range of textures, from fine horizontal lines on the leg piece (fig.7) to deep gouges in the head section.

Once Moore was satisfied with the surface finish of the plaster sculpture and was sure that he wanted to proceed with the casting process, he sent it to a specialist foundry to be cast in bronze. Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop exists in an edition of six, plus one artist’s copy. The edition was cast at two different foundries: numbers one, two and three were cast at Corinthian Bronze Co. Ltd in London, and numbers four, five and six at Noack in West Berlin. Tate’s cast is numbered ‘0/6’ (fig.8) indicating that it was the artist’s copy, and is stamped with the mark of the Noack foundry. Moore may have changed foundries half way through the edition because he preferred Noack’s methods (Corinthian is known to have used the sand-casting technique whereas Noack practised the lost wax technique) or because Noack may have offered a cheaper quote for undertaking the work.7 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 dealer Harry Fischer.8 By then Noack was regarded as one of the best bronze foundries able to undertake large-scale castings and 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’.9

The level of detail on Tate’s bronze copy of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop suggests that it was cast using the lost wax technique, which would have required the full-size plaster version to be carved up into smaller pieces so that moulds could be created of each piece. The inside of each mould would have been ‘greased’ with a releasing agent before molten wax was poured into it. Once the wax had hardened it could be released from the mould, forming an exact replica of the sculpture in wax. The wax would then be encased in a hard refractory material, placed in a kiln and heated until it melted. Channels within the casing would allow the wax to drain away and, once empty, the cavity was filled with molten bronze. After the bronze had hardened the casing could be removed, revealing the section of sculpture. Once all the pieces of the sculpture had been cast in this way they would be welded together. Finally, the casting seams would have been filed down so that the joins between each section were practically imperceptible.

After being assembled at the foundry the bronze sculpture was returned to Moore so that he could check the quality of the casting and make decisions about patination. A patina is the surface colour of a sculpture and is usually achieved by applying chemical solutions to the pre-heated bronze surface. In 1963 Moore asserted, ‘I always patinate bronze myself’, explaining that since he had conceived the sculpture it would be unlikely that someone else would be able to replicate the exact colour he wanted.10 However, it is known that Noack would sometimes patinate Moore’s sculpture at the foundry. But even in these instances Moore was still able to adjust the patina when the sculpture was returned to the studio. Tate’s sculpture has a variegated brown patina, punctuated with reddish-amber areas and dark green shades, which have been maintained by sealing the bronze in a wax coating (fig.9).

Moore’s series of three-piece sculptures developed from the two-piece sculptures he made between 1959 and 1963, which themselves had their origins in his multi-part sculptures from the 1930s, such as Four-Piece Composition: Reclining Figure 1934 (T02054, fig.10). In 1968 Moore explained that in 1933–4 ‘I began separating forms from each other in order to be able to relate space and form together’.11 This development allowed Moore to reconfigure the position of limbs to create compositional arrangements in which space became an active component of the sculpture, a feature that became more accentuated in his larger scale work of the 1960s. It also meant that individual forms could represent more than just anatomical features without severing the unity of the body, as Moore explained to David Sylvester in 1963:

Moore made his first three-piece reclining figure in 1961–2 (fig.11). In this work, each of the three pieces are spaced apart from each other at equal intervals, whereas in Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop the head section leans on the central section (fig.12) while the legs stand alone at the other end of the composition. Importantly, the head and central sections actually interlock in a way that is reminiscent of shoulder or hip joints. Writing in 1968, the critic Donald Hall noted this feature of the work:

It is probable that while making this work Moore was looking at bone fragments and thinking about how skeletons are made up of multiple interlocking units. This interest in interconnecting parts was developed further in Locking Piece 1963–4 (Tate T02293).

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop is one of Moore’s most complex representations of the reclining figure, a subject that preoccupied him throughout his career. In 1968 Moore reflected on the centrality of the reclining figure to his work, suggesting that the motif offered opportunities to experiment with form:

In a manner comparable to Cézanne’s representation of mass and volume, Moore’s distillation of the human body into forms of various size and shape allowed him stretch the boundaries of his sculptural vocabulary while retaining a commitment to figurative art.

Unlike Moore’s earlier two- and three-piece reclining figures such as Two-Piece Reclining Figure No.2 1960 (fig.13) – the forms of which have been compared to natural formations such as mountainous peaks and eroded cliff faces15 – interpretations of Three-Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop have compared the sculpture’s smooth surfaces and sleek curves to man-made structures. For example, in 1965 the art historian Herbert Read remarked that the head, shoulders, torso and lower limbs of the figure ‘have been smoothed and given a graceful curvilinear rhythm; they rest on the pedestal like the arches of a bridge’.16 David Sylvester also asserted that unlike its immediate predecessors, ‘Bridge Prop has clean-cut forms, virtually smooth surfaces, and is neither rock-like nor in any other way landscapeish’.17 Although he acceded that the two end pieces were ‘organic’, Sylvester noted that ‘the middle form looks man-made, architectonic – a bridge between the ends that is arched like a bridge, and a prop for the head end’.18 In 1970 Moore explained the sculpture’s lengthy title, underlining the influence of engineering in the development of the work:

A cast of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop was exhibited at Moore’s commercial gallery, Marlborough Fine Art, at its premises in London in July 1965 as part of a two-person exhibition that Moore shared with the painter Francis Bacon. An unnamed critic reviewing the show for the Times stated that the ‘the art of Mr Moore continues in its pace of unhurried majesty’.20 The term majesty was also used by the critic G.S. Whittet, who wrote in the art magazine Studio International that he was struck by ‘the strength of his imagery and his full majesty of those forms that create presences of themselves’.21 Writing in the Spectator magazine, Bryan Robertson, curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, noted that, ‘Moore’s invincible sense of human resilience ... is sometimes frozen into hard, wary monumentality as in the recent Bridge Prop reclining figure, but his surrealist instinct makes it hard to tell hot from cold, flesh from bone, helmet or shell from leathery skin’.22

The cast of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop belonging to the Leeds City Art Gallery was included in Moore’s retrospective exhibition held at the Tate Gallery in 1968. In an extended review of the show, the sculptor William Tucker suggested that the horizontality of Moore’s reclining figures such as Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop, which illustrated the review, allowed younger sculptors such as Anthony Caro to develop and open up the horizontal plane in new ways, arguing that ‘Moore’s re-discovery or at least re-affirmation for modern art of the horizontal axis has been his most fruitful contribution’.23

In 1970 the photographer and collector David Finn collaborated with the critic Donald Hall on a book dedicated to Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop called As the Eye Moves... A Sculpture by Henry Moore, in which 150 photographs taken by Finn of cast number six of the sculpture are accompanied by texts by Hall and Moore. The photographs examine the sculpture from different angles and were taken at different times of day, at different times of the year, and in different lighting conditions. In his foreword to the book Moore noted that:

Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop was presented by Henry Moore 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’.25 Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop was exhibited in gallery eighteen, alongside Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer 1964 (Tate T02298), Two Piece Sculpture No.7: Pipe 1966 (Tate T02300), and Upright Form Knife-Edge 1966 (Tate T01172) (fig.14). The exhibition was attended by over 20,500 people and nearly 11,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.26 At its close in late August the Director of Tate, Norman Reid, reflected in a letter to Moore’s daughter Mary Danowski 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’.27

The other casts of Three Piece Reclining Figure No.2: Bridge Prop can be found in the collections of the Leeds City Art Gallery, the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Moore’s original plaster is held in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Cast number three of the edition was sold at Sotheby’s to a private collector in February 2012 for £3,289,250.28