Henry Moore’s Public Commissions

Gain insight into the process behind Henry Moore’s large public commissions

The second room of the display looks at a selection of Henry Moore’s large public commissions, offering a fascinating insight into the process he used to make them.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Moore worked almost exclusively in plaster to be cast in bronze and around themes of the body, landscape and nature. He became known for his large-scale works that were made for locations as diverse as new housing estates in London, the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and Dallas City Hall.

The major works in this new display, including Reclining Figure 1951, and Draped Seated Woman 1957–8, are exhibited alongside drawings and maquettes, as well as film and photographs of the artist at work in his studio.

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Henry Moore OM, CH, Draped Seated Woman 1957–8, cast c.1958–63

Two casts of this monumental female figure have been sited in public urban spaces: one in Wuppertal in Germany, another in the East End of London. London County Council’s policy of placing such work in deprived areas was part of a post-war revival of civil aspirations and social reform.

Gallery label, June 2003

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Henry Moore OM, CH, Reclining Figure: Bunched 1961, cast 1961–2

By the mid-1950s Moore had almost entirely eliminated drawing from his creative process and explored his ideas through small maquettes. These had an intrinsic quality of immediacy or spontaneity and allowed him to imagine the finished product in the round. In order to translate the scale of the work more effectively, he often made larger working models as an intermediate stage between the maquette and the finished sculpture. Moore’s maquettes were typically cast in bronze in editions of up to ten. The sculptor strove for monumentality in his work and tried to imbue the same quality in the small maquettes. He also took a great deal of care with their finish. Some were more polished than others, some darker, some greener. Moore did all the patination himself, treating the bronze with different acids to achieve different effects then working on it by hand, rubbing and wearing it down.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Henry Moore OM, CH, Reclining Figure 1951

In the late 1940s, the Arts Council invited Moore to submit ideas for a sculpture to be sited at the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain. Although the organising committee suggested a family theme, Moore chose to make this tense, skeletal reclining form. The work on display is the plaster model for the bronze, which was cast in an edition of five.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Francis Bacon, Dog 1952

Throughout his career, Francis Bacon included animals in his paintings to represent the wildness of human emotion. Here, Bacon viscerally smears paint to suggest a snarling dog, evoking aggression, vulnerability or both. The image comes from Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 time-lapse photographs of animals in motion. Bacon isolates the dog, placing it in an ambiguous setting based on the sea front in Monte Carlo, where he lived from 1946 to 1950.

Gallery label, August 2024

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Henry Moore OM, CH, Working Model for Unesco Reclining Figure 1957, cast c.1959–61

This sculpture is related to the UNESCO Reclining Figure at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters shown in the photograph above. That work is carved from travertine marble and is unique. This smaller bronze sculpture is in an edition of six. As with his other public sculptures Moore sought to avoid narrative or overt rhetoric. The universal significance attributed to Moore’s sculpture made it particularly appropriate for a global organisation such as UNESCO.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Henry Moore OM, CH, Woman 1957–8, cast date unknown

This is one of the largest of Moore's sculptures of a seated female nude, and it was cast in an edition of nine. The original plaster is in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and the curator there, Alan Wilkinson, has described this sculpture as 'one of the most potent images of fertility produced in the 20th century'. He also related it to Moore's early interest in Palaeolithic sculpture, an influence the artist readily acknowledged. Moore wrote of the work: ''Woman' has that startling fullness of the stomach and breasts. The smallness of the head is necessary to emphasize the massiveness of the body - if the head had been any larger it would have ruined the whole idea of the sculpture.'

Gallery label, September 2004

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Francis Bacon, Triptych August 1972 1972

This work is generally considered one in a series of Black Triptychs which followed the suicide of Bacon’s lover, George Dyer. Dyer appears on the left and Bacon is on the right. The central group is derived from a photograph of wrestlers by Edward Muybridge, but also suggests a more sexual encounter. The seated figures and their coupling are set against black voids and the central flurry has been seen as ‘a life-and death struggle’. The artist’s biographer wrote: ‘What death has not already consumed seeps incontinently out of the figures as their shadows.’

Gallery label, September 2016

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Francis Bacon, Three Figures and Portrait 1975

Two dynamic figures and bird-like creature are placed within a claustrophobic setting. The three figures are watched over by a portrait. This work is usually seen as an image of suffering. One - and possibly both - of the twisting human figures have been identified as George Dyer, Bacon’s companion, lover and muse. Dyer killed himself in 1971, but Bacon continued to portray him after his death. The bird-like form in the foreground, with its snarling human mouth, has been linked to the Furies, goddesses of vengeance in Greek mythology.

Gallery label, June 2021

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