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Lot Essay
In September 1940, Moore and his wife were returning by tube to Hampstead on the Northern line, when they came across people sheltering at Belsize Park station. He wrote, 'We stayed there for an hour and I was fascinated by the sight of people camping out deep underground. I had never seen so many reclining figures and even the holes out of which the tube trains were coming seemed to me like holes in my sculpture. And there were intimate little touches. Children fast asleep, with trains roaring past only a couple of yards away. People who were obviously strangers to one another forming tight little intimate groups. They were cut off from what was happening up above, but they were aware of it. There was tension in the air' (see J. Andrews, London's War, The Shelter Drawings of Henry Moore, Aldershot, 2002, p. 36).
Malcolm Yorke comments that, 'One of Moore's obsessions as a sculptor was the reclining figure, and here before him were lines of them as far as the eye could see. He had abandoned sculpture for the war period as being too cumbersome and unsaleable but, as he told Herbert Read, "Drawing keeps one fit, like physical exercises"' (see M. Yorke, The Spirit of Place, London, 1988, p. 126).
By January 1941 Moore had been approached by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, and in his official role as a War Artist, he was able to obtain a permit to visit different London shelters which were extensive throughout the underground system.
'Moore's figures inhabit a tunnel structure with no hint of rails or advertisements and are wrapped in shroud-like garments. They could represent any of the suffering misplaced peoples of Europe or, since their dress and setting lacks all specificity, any group at any time in history' (ibid., p. 128). The shelter drawings vary greatly in composition and perspective, some showing rows of rounded sleeping figures, some single figures, some focusing on the receding tube tunnel and others are multiple studies of single figures.
Malcolm Yorke comments that, 'One of Moore's obsessions as a sculptor was the reclining figure, and here before him were lines of them as far as the eye could see. He had abandoned sculpture for the war period as being too cumbersome and unsaleable but, as he told Herbert Read, "Drawing keeps one fit, like physical exercises"' (see M. Yorke, The Spirit of Place, London, 1988, p. 126).
By January 1941 Moore had been approached by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, and in his official role as a War Artist, he was able to obtain a permit to visit different London shelters which were extensive throughout the underground system.
'Moore's figures inhabit a tunnel structure with no hint of rails or advertisements and are wrapped in shroud-like garments. They could represent any of the suffering misplaced peoples of Europe or, since their dress and setting lacks all specificity, any group at any time in history' (ibid., p. 128). The shelter drawings vary greatly in composition and perspective, some showing rows of rounded sleeping figures, some single figures, some focusing on the receding tube tunnel and others are multiple studies of single figures.