Mother and Child: Upright

The theme of parent and child is recurrent in Henry Moore's oeuvre and is consistent with his desire to evoke the "community of life" as he termed it in his work. His earliest treatment of the subject reflected his wish for harmony in the post-war world and his expression of joy at the prospect of fatherhood after sixteen years of marriage. As Susan Compton notes: "Moore's considerable attention to the family does not only imply a personal response to a subject near his heart, it consolidates his move towards a wider and more humanist approach appropriate for public sculpture" (S. Compton, Henry Moore, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, p. 224).
Moore wrote of the subject of mother and child: "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)" (quoted in D. Mitchinson, ed., op. cit., p. 90). In the present piece the connection between the two figures conveys an intimacy that is characteristic of the depth of his exploration of the theme in the later years of his life.