Lot Essay
The Mother and Child was a recurring theme throughout Moore's work. Moore said, "There are two particular motives 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.)" (See D. Sylvester, loc. cit., p. XXV).
"Henry Moore began making sculpture in 1922 and in that year he created his earliest surviving independent carving. Entitled Mother and Child (Fig. 12), this piece marked the beginning of Henry Moore's interest in the mother and child theme or as he called it, his 'obsession'. Henry Moore had a long and productive career in which the mother and child figures prominently, particularly during the first and last periods in his career. Moore continuously found new ways of exploring the idea so that the imagery could take on meaning beyond the aesthetics of its form. The development of his mother and child imagery reveals that Moore's involvement in this theme reaches beyond maternity to an inquiry into birth and creativity. The theme of the mother and child, of the mother giving birth, the child struggling to emerge from the block of stone. The birth of the form from the stone is, like any birth, not without a struggle." (G. Gelburd, Mother and Child: The Art of Henry Moore, exhibition catalogue, Hofstra University, New York, 1987, p. 27).
The Mother and Child image of the early thirties, with the mother cut off at the waist, shows a concern with weight and density and immovability. In this work, as in others of this period, there is no point where the mother and child are not joined and this gives the sculpture its sense of density. The sculpture also expresses the importance of the fusion between the Mother and Child, the maternal force drawing the two figures tightly together.
The painted plaster version of this sculpture was sold in these Rooms on 26 June 1989, lot 57 (illustrated in colour).
"Henry Moore began making sculpture in 1922 and in that year he created his earliest surviving independent carving. Entitled Mother and Child (Fig. 12), this piece marked the beginning of Henry Moore's interest in the mother and child theme or as he called it, his 'obsession'. Henry Moore had a long and productive career in which the mother and child figures prominently, particularly during the first and last periods in his career. Moore continuously found new ways of exploring the idea so that the imagery could take on meaning beyond the aesthetics of its form. The development of his mother and child imagery reveals that Moore's involvement in this theme reaches beyond maternity to an inquiry into birth and creativity. The theme of the mother and child, of the mother giving birth, the child struggling to emerge from the block of stone. The birth of the form from the stone is, like any birth, not without a struggle." (G. Gelburd, Mother and Child: The Art of Henry Moore, exhibition catalogue, Hofstra University, New York, 1987, p. 27).
The Mother and Child image of the early thirties, with the mother cut off at the waist, shows a concern with weight and density and immovability. In this work, as in others of this period, there is no point where the mother and child are not joined and this gives the sculpture its sense of density. The sculpture also expresses the importance of the fusion between the Mother and Child, the maternal force drawing the two figures tightly together.
The painted plaster version of this sculpture was sold in these Rooms on 26 June 1989, lot 57 (illustrated in colour).