"The lead figures came at a stage in my sculpture career when I wanted to experiment with thinner forms than stone could give and, of course, in metal you can have very thin forms. So this thinness that one could make and this desire for making space became something I wanted to do. Yet I couldn't afford in those days to make plasters and have them cast into bronze because I would have had to send them and pay a huge fee to the bronze foundry. Whereas lead I could melt on the kitchen stove and pour it into a mould myself. In fact I ruined my wife's saucepans because the lead was so heavy that it bent the handles and the pans were sometimes put out of shape. But I could mould it myself and do the casting myself and it was soft enough when cast to work on it and give a refinement; I could cut it down thinner, and finish the surface, so for me lead was both economically possible and physically more malleable." (Henry Moore, ed. D. Mitchinson, op. cit.)

The original 1938 lead version was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1939. In addition to the two bronze editions, a large version measuring 35 feet long was cast in bronze in 1983 for placement in front of the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation building, designed by I.M. Pei, in Singapore.