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Lot Essay
Henry Moore conceived this robustly proportioned Seated Figure in 1949 in response to a commission from the British Film Academy. From the bronze cast it received, the Film Academy—today the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)— had replicas made, which it presented each year (through 1967) to the production unit of award-winning films in five categories: Film from Any Source, British Film, United Nations Award, Short Film, and Specialized Film.
This present sculpture is a development of Moore’s seated mother in the Madonna and Child, which he had carved in Hornton stone in 1944 for the Church of St. Matthew in Northampton. This work also relates to the women in the Family Groups, several of which Moore enlarged from his small terracotta sketch-models and cast in bronze following the end of the Second World War. Here, the seated woman holds a sprig of laurel leaves in her left hand, symbolizing achievement and victory.
While Moore often gravitated toward the reclining figure for the greater freedom that this posture offered him, he appreciated the powerful stability and assurance of the seated form. Inspired by four Greek archaic seated marble figures in the British Museum (580-510 BCE), he extolled their “repose and monumentality. Look how poised yet relaxed that simple head is, it’s the very essence of a head on a neck and shoulders” (quoted in D. Finn, Henry Moore at the British Museum, New York, 1981, pp. 35 and 50). As if enthroned, his seated figures too become resplendently monumental.
This present sculpture is a development of Moore’s seated mother in the Madonna and Child, which he had carved in Hornton stone in 1944 for the Church of St. Matthew in Northampton. This work also relates to the women in the Family Groups, several of which Moore enlarged from his small terracotta sketch-models and cast in bronze following the end of the Second World War. Here, the seated woman holds a sprig of laurel leaves in her left hand, symbolizing achievement and victory.
While Moore often gravitated toward the reclining figure for the greater freedom that this posture offered him, he appreciated the powerful stability and assurance of the seated form. Inspired by four Greek archaic seated marble figures in the British Museum (580-510 BCE), he extolled their “repose and monumentality. Look how poised yet relaxed that simple head is, it’s the very essence of a head on a neck and shoulders” (quoted in D. Finn, Henry Moore at the British Museum, New York, 1981, pp. 35 and 50). As if enthroned, his seated figures too become resplendently monumental.