Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity

The Gemma Levine Archive, housed in the Tate Archive, comprises photographs, audio recordings, ephemera and various volumes. A leading portrait photographer, Levine (born 1939) produced twenty publications and her work featured in over sixty exhibitions. Her photographs were sometimes shown alongside Moore’s sculptures. The mentorship she received from Henry Moore, whom she visited at his home Hoglands in the village of Perry Green, Hertfordshire, from 1976 to his death in 1986, played a key role in developing her professional practice, and her archive is rich in materials relating to this period in her life. These include unpublished photographs and contact sheets of photo shoots.

Levine worked with Moore to produce three photographic books about his life and work: With Henry Moore: The Artist at Work (1978), Henry Moore: Wood Sculpture (1983) and Henry Moore: An Illustrated Biography (1985). Together these volumes offered fresh and sometimes seemingly intimate insights into the life and practice of the artist in the last decade of his life.

When Levine visited Moore at his home, they would occasionally walk together around the grounds, taking photographs of the sculptures in the gardens. Camera in hand, Moore would discuss shape, highlights and shadows in the things they were seeing. Levine consciously sought to adopt Moore’s artistic perspective and emulate his approach in her photographs.

Each of the three photo books she made was developed collaboratively with Moore. She showed him her contact sheets and recorded his responses to the images on them. The choice of images for the books was recorded on the sheets themselves, including mark-ups for crops and other alterations. The texts for the publications were developed from edited versions of their recorded discussions.

As well as opening his studio to Levine and many other photographers, Moore also extended his mentorship to studio assistants. During his career, over forty people – mainly young sculptors who were still in college or who had just finished their studies – worked for Moore. These assistants undertook a range of tasks and were taught carving techniques and methods of scaling up. They learnt about Moore’s approach to size and scale, and often contributed to his artistic ideas.

Levine’s career as a portrait photographer started with her images of Moore at his home, Hoglands, in the village of Perry Green. Included in her archive is a contact sheet from her first photographic session with Moore in July 1976. She recalled, ‘I went down with a tiny instamatic camera and took these very old fashioned photographs.’1 During visits made in January 1978 Levine photographed Moore using a camera, capturing images of trees that later informed a series of drawings and etchings.

While many photographs of Moore at work were staged, Levine was an unobtrusive presence and was able to capture Moore in the midst of his work. Self-consciously adopting Moore’s interest in the details of light and shade in nature and in sculpture, Levine highlighted these same aspects in her images of the artist’s face and hands.

The Gemma Levine Archive contains a significant number of photographs that concentrate on Moore’s face and hands. These images show Henry Moore studying and contemplating found objects and maquettes, and also caressing finished works. Levine aimed to capture aspects of his approach to form and space through focusing on the relationship between his gaze and hands. In a discussion in 1978 about her book With Henry Moore: The Artist at Work Levine asked Moore to explain the various tools she had photographed and he replied, ‘tools are only an extension of your arms and hands’.2

Photographs of Moore’s work in various states of realisation can be found throughout Gemma Levine’s Archive. In 1976 she was present when Moore came across a large trunk of diseased elmwood near the Sheep Barn at Perry Green. Levine recalled, ‘I then put forward the idea of a stage by stage progression of the piece of wood ... through a series of photographs taken periodically, to show the public how a great sculptor works’.3 Levine recorded each stage of the realisation of Reclining Figure: Holes 1976–8, from Moore standing next to the tree trunk, through its carving by Moore, Malcolm Woodward and Michel Muller, to the sculpture’s installment in the Wildenstein Gallery, New York. Other photographs show the stages of scaling up the full-size plaster of Mirror Knife Edge 1977, making it ready for bronze casting at the Morris Singer bronze foundry in Basingstoke.

Levine also photographed Moore’s tools and implements of production. Photographs of Moore at work in his etching studio and those taken at the Curwen Press in London show the progression of a number of graphic works, including The Reclining Figure Portfolio 1978, Reclining Figure and Mother and Child Studies 1977 and Reclining Figure Interior Setting II 1977.

Moore’s approach to photography – to observe what is found and capture the experience for others to contemplate – resonates throughout Levine’s Archive. Ranging from initial photographs that recorded sculpture for possible commercial promotion to more composed images that explored multiple details of Moore’s completed works, Levine developed her technique and photographic practice under Moore’s mentorship in ways that reflected his view of how to examine sculpture (‘It is the three-dimensional reality and shape which one wants to understand, to grasp and to experience.’)4

Moore believed that sculpture should be photographed from multiple angles, not only to create comprehensive records but also to mimic the experience of viewing works. He also stressed the importance of natural light in his sculptural and photographic practice and disregarded flash photography because of it flattened forms. Moore and Levine’s collaborative publications reveal a mix of documentary approaches as well as more individual or subjective shots. Levine’s photographs of works such as Bird Basket 1939 in lignum vitae and string, and Oval with Points 1968–70 in bronze showed her interest in capturing specific details. Her 1978 photographs of Large Two Forms 1969 as installed in Kensington Gardens explored a sculpture in relation to its site.

From spring 1976 Gemma Levine became a regular visitor to Moore’s home, Hoglands, in the village of Perry Green. While exploring the Hoglands estate and coming to know Moore’s daily routine, Levine sought to remain in the background and not disturb the artist’s life. In photographing his home she aimed to create a context for Moore’s artistic vision through the objects and artworks that surrounded him. Moore’s home environment is presented as welcoming but also a curated space for exhibiting artworks and artefacts.

Working with Henry Moore from 1976 to 1986, Levine witnessed several important events in the artist’s last years. Photographs in the Gemma Levine Archive show radio and TV interviews, including those filmed by John Read for the BBC, the private view of Moore’s eightieth birthday exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery on 29 June 1978, the unveiling of The Arch 1979–80 at Kensington Park in 1980, and the opening of the Moore Sculpture Gallery at Leeds City Art Gallery by Queen Elizabeth II on 26 November 1982. For her third collaborative publication with Moore, Henry Moore: An Illustrated Biography (1985) Levine revisited and documented locations of historical importance to Henry Moore including Adel Rock, Castleford, the coalfields of Wheldale Colliery and his previous studio locations in London.