Lot Essay
The present sculpture is the second model that the artist made in preparation for his 1975-1976 Reclining Mother and Child (Bowness, vol. 5, no. 649). Moore wrote: "There are two particular motifs or subjects which I have constantly used in my sculpture in the last twenty years: they are the Reclining Figure idea and the Mother and Child idea. (Perhaps of the two the Mother and Child has been the more fundamental obsession)" (ed. D. Mitchinson, Henry Moore Sculpture with Comments by the Artist, London, 1981, p. 90).
In this particular sculpture the artist has further developed the latter theme. "...the baby has become an object, such as the mirror for a reclinining nude to hold up, that another artist might give to his model. But Moore's choice of symbol is vital to his work, for a child is not the image of its mother, but her fruition, so he has insured that it does not resemble her but fulfills her: the unlikeness is intergral to the meaning. His earlier reclining figures were too self-contained or analogous to landscape to encompass a child; but here Moore has succeeded in combining two of his dearest images." (Henry Moore, The Royal Academy of Art, exhibition catalogue, London, 1988, pp. 266-267)
In this particular sculpture the artist has further developed the latter theme. "...the baby has become an object, such as the mirror for a reclinining nude to hold up, that another artist might give to his model. But Moore's choice of symbol is vital to his work, for a child is not the image of its mother, but her fruition, so he has insured that it does not resemble her but fulfills her: the unlikeness is intergral to the meaning. His earlier reclining figures were too self-contained or analogous to landscape to encompass a child; but here Moore has succeeded in combining two of his dearest images." (Henry Moore, The Royal Academy of Art, exhibition catalogue, London, 1988, pp. 266-267)