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Dimensions: length: 86 in.
218.5 cm
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Provenance: THE PHILIP AND MURIEL BERMAN COLLECTION
Acquired from the artist on May 8, 1981
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Exhibited: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry Moore: An Exhibition in Celebration of Philip I. Berman, 1998, no. 8
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Literature: David Mitchinson (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture, London, 1981, nos. 565 & 566, illustrations of another cast pp. 272-73
Henry Moore: Sculptures, Drawings, Graphics 1921-1981 (exhibition catalogue), Palacio de Velazquez, Madrid; Palacio de Cristal, Madrid; Parque de El Retiro, Madrid, 1981, no. 565, illustration of another cast pp. 272-73
Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1983, vol. 5, no. 675, illustrations of another cast p. 25 & pls. 54-59
Henry Moore: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, Grafiken (exhibition catalogue), Orangerie Palais Auersperg, Vienna, 1983, no. 4, illustration of another cast pp. 20-21
The Art of Henry Moore: Sculptures, drawings and graphics 1921 to 1984 (exhibition catalogue), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; Fukuoka Art Museum, Tokyo, 1986, no. 13, illustration of another cast p. 50
Henry Moore 1898-1986 (exhibition catalogue), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 1992, no. 163, illustration of another cast p. 183
Moore al Castello Sforzesco (exhibition catalogue), Castello Sforzesco, Milan, 1992, illustration of another cast pl. 86-7
David Cohen, Moore in the Bagatelle Gardens, New York, 1993, illustration of another cast pl. XXIV
Henry Moore: gli ultimi 10 anni (exhibition catalogue), Castelgrande, Bellinzona, Switzerland; Castel Nuovo, Naples, Italy, 1995, no. 19, illustration of another cast pp. 70-77
Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20th Century (exhibition catalogue), Dallas Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-02, no. 98, illustration of another cast p. 241
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Notes: The subject of the reclining figure, explored in this monumental work, is probably the single most iconic image of Henry Moore's oeuvre. Initially inspired by Mexican sculpture, this subject recurs throughout the artist's career, ranging from organic forms to near-abstract, geometric ones, and including several monumental versions. Writing about Moore's large outdoor sculptures, David Sylvester commented: "They are made to look as if they themselves had been shaped by nature's energy. They seem to be weathered, eroded, tunnelled-into by the action of wind and water. The first time Moore published his thoughts about art, he wrote that the sculpture which moved him most gave out 'something of the energy and power of great mountains' [...] Moore's reclining figures are not supine; they prop themselves up, are potentially active. Hence the affinity with river-gods; the idea is not simply that of a body subjected to the flow of nature's forces but of one in which those forces are harnessed" (David Sylvester, Henry Moore, New York and London, 1968, p. 5).
Henry Moore was first exposed to images of Pre-Columbian art while an art student at the Leeds School of Art. After his arrival in London in 1921, Moore spent his free time exploring the treasures of the British Museum. Although it is not known when he first saw the image of the reclining god Chacmool (fig. 1), there is a sketch of that deity in one of his notebooks dating from 1922. Moore's first sculptural interpretation of Chacmool was Reclining Figure, executed in stone in 1929 (fig. 2). In 1941 Moore wrote that "of works from the Americas, Mexican art was exceptionally well represented in the [British] Museum. Mexican sculpture [...] seemed to me true and right. Its 'stoniness' by which I mean its truth to material, its tremendous power without loss of sensitiveness, its astonishing variety and fertility of form-invention and its approach to a full three-dimensional conception of form, make it unsurpassed in my opinion by any other period of stone sculpture."
While Moore usually rendered the image of the reclining female in the nude, in the present work she is covered, and it is this ambiguity between the soft folds of the fabric, mostly accentuated around the legs, and the strong, solid forms of the figure's body, that lends the work much of its vitality. It was whilst working on his Shelter Drawings during the Second World War that Moore became increasingly absorbed in the manner in which drapery could denote sculptural volume. The three-dimensional effect achieved by the folds in a figure's garment is in part inspired by the sculpture and reliefs from Classical antiquity, particularly some of the Parthenon figures (fig. 3). Sylvester considered Moore's use of drapery as a method of further integrating his figures into the landscape. According to him, the artist used "the folds to create a variant of the metaphor of the figure as a landscape... to connect the contrasts of sizes of folds, small, fine and delicate, in other places big and heavy, with the form of mountains, which are the crinkled skin of the earth" (ibid., p. 109). With its heavy, solid forms, the female figure in the present sculpture appears close to the earth, and the mountainous force described by Sylvester can be seen in the triangular shape of her legs. With her backwards gaze and her monumental, dignified head looking into infinity, the figure acquires a timeless quality, symbolizing the eternal expanse of the universe and man's presence in it.
When the present bronze was exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Michael R. Taylor wrote the following about it in the exhibition catalogue: "Reclining Figure: Angles, of 1979, is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Moore's later career. This draped female has been associated with the artist's first trip to Greece in 1951 on the occasion of the British Council's touring exhibition of his work. The artist's powerful response to the classical sculpture he saw there led, in the 1950s and beyond, to a number of important sculptures whose naturalism broke new ground for the artist" (Michael R. Taylor in Henry Moore: An Exhibition in Celebration of Philip I Berman (exhibition catalogue) Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1998, p. 36).
In 1975, Moore executed two smaller versions of the present work: Maquette for Reclining Figure: Angles and Working Model for Reclining Figure: Angles (Alan Bowness (ed.), op. cit., nos. 673 & 674). Four years later, he executed the monumental version in an edition of nine bronze casts, including the present work and one in the collection of the National Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
Fig. 1, Chacmool, Chichén Itzá
Fig. 2, Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, stone, 1929, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds
Fig. 3, Parthenon, Dionysus from the East Pediment
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