Lot Essay
In 1942 Moore was asked to carve a Madonna and Child to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary in 1943 of the parish church of St. Matthew in Northampton. Since he received the commission with a relatively free hand, he started to work on the Family Group at about the same time as the Madonna. The theme of the Family Group materialised from the time when Moore was asked by Henry Morris and Walter Gropius to create a sculpture for a village college at Impington near Cambridge. The college's ideal of both child and adult education in a single institution appealed to Moore, who was preoccupied with the link between parent and child. He went ahead with the project immediately and the number of Family Group drawings and maquettes produced in 1944 demonstrates his preoccupation with this theme.
As Susan Compton wrote in the catalogue of the Moore exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1988: "Moore's considered attention to the family does not only imply a personal response to a subject near to his heart; it consolidates his move towards a wider and more humanist approach appropriate for public sculpture. Originally trained as a school teacher himself, his imagination was fired by the ideal of the extension of education to all sectors of the community." (S. Compton, Henry Moore, London, 1988, p. 224).
Will Grohmann discusses the subject further: "In the years between 1944 and 1947 he [Moore] produced a number of larger and smaller variations in stone, bronze and terracotta, differing considerably from one another, being both naturalistic and non-naturalistic, though never as abstract as the 'reclining figures'. The theme does not hem him in, but it demands a certain readiness to enter into the meaning of a community such as the family." (The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141).
The casting of Moore's early maquettes is not fully documented. Edition numbers were not recorded and no proper records were kept by the artist during the 1940s and 1950s. Although there may have been an initial edition of seven unnumbered casts of this bronze, together with some artist's proof casts, they were not necessarily all cast at the same time or at the same foundry. Small variations in dimensions and weight exist between different recorded casts suggesting that the original waxes may have been worked on to different standards of finish and the casts given somewhat varying patinas. No cast of the present bronze is in an English public collection though the Museums in Melbourne, Lincoln, Nebraska and Gothenburg had all acquired casts by the early 1950s. Mrs Kodicek probably bought her cast in the early 1950s when the main bulk of her collection (sold Christie's, London, 23 June 1993) was formed.
The present cast is recorded in the records of the Henry Moore Foundation and Sir Alan Bowness has confirmed that it will be included in the revised edition of volume I of the Lund Humphries catalogue raisonné.
As Susan Compton wrote in the catalogue of the Moore exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1988: "Moore's considered attention to the family does not only imply a personal response to a subject near to his heart; it consolidates his move towards a wider and more humanist approach appropriate for public sculpture. Originally trained as a school teacher himself, his imagination was fired by the ideal of the extension of education to all sectors of the community." (S. Compton, Henry Moore, London, 1988, p. 224).
Will Grohmann discusses the subject further: "In the years between 1944 and 1947 he [Moore] produced a number of larger and smaller variations in stone, bronze and terracotta, differing considerably from one another, being both naturalistic and non-naturalistic, though never as abstract as the 'reclining figures'. The theme does not hem him in, but it demands a certain readiness to enter into the meaning of a community such as the family." (The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141).
The casting of Moore's early maquettes is not fully documented. Edition numbers were not recorded and no proper records were kept by the artist during the 1940s and 1950s. Although there may have been an initial edition of seven unnumbered casts of this bronze, together with some artist's proof casts, they were not necessarily all cast at the same time or at the same foundry. Small variations in dimensions and weight exist between different recorded casts suggesting that the original waxes may have been worked on to different standards of finish and the casts given somewhat varying patinas. No cast of the present bronze is in an English public collection though the Museums in Melbourne, Lincoln, Nebraska and Gothenburg had all acquired casts by the early 1950s. Mrs Kodicek probably bought her cast in the early 1950s when the main bulk of her collection (sold Christie's, London, 23 June 1993) was formed.
The present cast is recorded in the records of the Henry Moore Foundation and Sir Alan Bowness has confirmed that it will be included in the revised edition of volume I of the Lund Humphries catalogue raisonné.