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Lot Essay
Seated Figure: Study for Stone Sculpture is related to the male figure in the sculpture Family Group, 1948-1949 (Bowness, vol. 2, no. 269) which Moore executed as a commission for the Barclay School in Stevange, Hertfordshire. This was the sculptor's first large, public treatment in his work of the important family group subject, which was an outgrowth of the Madonna/mother and child themes that he had explored in previous years, and was further inspired by the birth of his daughter Mary in 1946. Moore subsequently cast the father separately, with modifications, as Seated Man, 1949 (B., vol. 2, no. 269a; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge). The male figure in this drawing was based on a study that appears at lower right in Seated Figures, circa 1948 (A. Garrould, no. 47-49. 53).The smaller study of a seated woman on the left side was derived from a figure at upper left in the earlier drawing, which is related to mothers in various small sculptures (sketch-models) of family groups that Moore executed between 1944 and 1947.
This powerfully rendered drawing is notable for the pronounced and expressive use of what Moore has called his "two-way sectional line method of drawing," in which he employed a network of intersecting lines, "both down the form and around it," to define form and project a sense of volume and weight (quoted in A.G. Wilkinson, The Drawings of Henry Moore, exh. cat., The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1977, p. 16). Moore devised this method as early as 1928, and used it for studies during the 1930s and early 1940s, but it reached its culmination in the large family group drawings and other scenes of domestic life done in 1948. Here Wilkinson notes that "the figure looks as if it has been composed of stones cut into sections, and fitted together like a three dimensional jig-saw puzzle" (in ibid, p. 128)
Anthony Roland is the son of Henry Roland, who was a partner in the important London gallery Roland, Browse and Delbanco. Early in his career Anthony Roland worked for his father's gallery, and then turned to making films, specialising in documentaries about artists. He has assembled the Roland Collection of Films and Videos on Art, an important archive of programmes covering the entire range of world art history.
This powerfully rendered drawing is notable for the pronounced and expressive use of what Moore has called his "two-way sectional line method of drawing," in which he employed a network of intersecting lines, "both down the form and around it," to define form and project a sense of volume and weight (quoted in A.G. Wilkinson, The Drawings of Henry Moore, exh. cat., The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1977, p. 16). Moore devised this method as early as 1928, and used it for studies during the 1930s and early 1940s, but it reached its culmination in the large family group drawings and other scenes of domestic life done in 1948. Here Wilkinson notes that "the figure looks as if it has been composed of stones cut into sections, and fitted together like a three dimensional jig-saw puzzle" (in ibid, p. 128)
Anthony Roland is the son of Henry Roland, who was a partner in the important London gallery Roland, Browse and Delbanco. Early in his career Anthony Roland worked for his father's gallery, and then turned to making films, specialising in documentaries about artists. He has assembled the Roland Collection of Films and Videos on Art, an important archive of programmes covering the entire range of world art history.