.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Henry Moore Foundation has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture.
Two Seated Women and a Child is part of a series of eighteen sculptures on the theme of the family group that Moore made between 1944 and 1949. Moore first considered this subject in 1934, when the educational pioneer, Henry Morris, approached him about undertaking a large, public sculpture to install in front of the newly opened "village college" at Impington, near Cambridge. The goal of the village college program was to build community life by allowing full use of the school facilities in the evenings and on weekends for parents to further their own education. Morris and his architect, Walter Gropius, envisioned a sculpture that would express the connection between family and school, and Moore proposed a family group. Funding for the proposed sculpture was insufficient, however, and the commission languished for a full decade.
In 1944, Morris contacted Moore once again, and the sculptor agreed to pursue the project. Over the course of the next nine months, he made dozens of drawings on the theme of the family group, followed by a series of fifteen clay maquettes measuring between five and eight inches high. The present sculpture is a bronze cast of one of these maquettes (cf. D. Sylvester, nos. 227-240). Morris again had difficulty raising the requisite funds, however, and the project was abandoned for a second time. In 1946, Moore sculpted two family groups in a slightly larger size, perhaps inspired by the birth of his daughter, Mary, in that year (D. Sylvester, nos. 265 and 267). Finally, in 1947, he was asked by John Newsome, director of education in Herfordshire and a friend of Henry Morris, to create a sculpture for a new school being built at Stevenage. Moore selected one of the 1945 maquettes and executed a life-size bronze version, which was installed at Stevenage in 1949 (D. Sylvester, no. 269). To defray to the costs of the project, he made an additional four casts of the monumental Family Group for sale. These are housed today in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena, and the Hakone Museum in Japan.
Discussing the Family Group series, Will Grohmann has written, "In the years between 1944 and 1947, 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. 'To be an artist is to believe in life,' Moore writes, 'and this includes community life'" (The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141). Likewise, Susan Compton explains, "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" (Henry Moore, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, p. 224).
The present sculpture is noteworthy as the only one of the Family Group compositions that features two adult women, rather than a woman and a man. In this respect, it is closely related to one of the principal themes that preoccupied Moore throughout his career: the mother and child. In 1942, two years before he began his Family Group series, Moore made an important group of Mother and Child sculptures in conjunction with a commission from the parish church of St. Matthew in Northampton. Discussing this project during an interview in 1953, the sculptor commented, "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)" (quoted in D. Mitchinson, op. cit., p. 90).
Two Seated Women and a Child is part of a series of eighteen sculptures on the theme of the family group that Moore made between 1944 and 1949. Moore first considered this subject in 1934, when the educational pioneer, Henry Morris, approached him about undertaking a large, public sculpture to install in front of the newly opened "village college" at Impington, near Cambridge. The goal of the village college program was to build community life by allowing full use of the school facilities in the evenings and on weekends for parents to further their own education. Morris and his architect, Walter Gropius, envisioned a sculpture that would express the connection between family and school, and Moore proposed a family group. Funding for the proposed sculpture was insufficient, however, and the commission languished for a full decade.
In 1944, Morris contacted Moore once again, and the sculptor agreed to pursue the project. Over the course of the next nine months, he made dozens of drawings on the theme of the family group, followed by a series of fifteen clay maquettes measuring between five and eight inches high. The present sculpture is a bronze cast of one of these maquettes (cf. D. Sylvester, nos. 227-240). Morris again had difficulty raising the requisite funds, however, and the project was abandoned for a second time. In 1946, Moore sculpted two family groups in a slightly larger size, perhaps inspired by the birth of his daughter, Mary, in that year (D. Sylvester, nos. 265 and 267). Finally, in 1947, he was asked by John Newsome, director of education in Herfordshire and a friend of Henry Morris, to create a sculpture for a new school being built at Stevenage. Moore selected one of the 1945 maquettes and executed a life-size bronze version, which was installed at Stevenage in 1949 (D. Sylvester, no. 269). To defray to the costs of the project, he made an additional four casts of the monumental Family Group for sale. These are housed today in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena, and the Hakone Museum in Japan.
Discussing the Family Group series, Will Grohmann has written, "In the years between 1944 and 1947, 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. 'To be an artist is to believe in life,' Moore writes, 'and this includes community life'" (The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141). Likewise, Susan Compton explains, "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" (Henry Moore, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, p. 224).
The present sculpture is noteworthy as the only one of the Family Group compositions that features two adult women, rather than a woman and a man. In this respect, it is closely related to one of the principal themes that preoccupied Moore throughout his career: the mother and child. In 1942, two years before he began his Family Group series, Moore made an important group of Mother and Child sculptures in conjunction with a commission from the parish church of St. Matthew in Northampton. Discussing this project during an interview in 1953, the sculptor commented, "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)" (quoted in D. Mitchinson, op. cit., p. 90).