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Lot Essay
Created in 1955, Seated Figure: Armless exemplifies the single seated figure that reoccurs in Moore’s work of this period. Distinct from his reclining and standing figures, this seated figure is upright and frontal in pose. The static attitude of the figure is offset by the subtle movement apparent in the tilting head, and the solidity of the form suggests a sense of poise and calm contemplation.
The depiction of the weighty female figure can be traced back to his early life drawings of the 1920s, when he looked to the paintings of fleshy nudes by Peter Paul Rubens as inspiration for his own work. The women painted by Cézanne similarly informed his work, and he later recalled, ‘Cézanne’s figures had a monumentality about them that I liked. In his Bathers, the figures were very sculptural in the sense of being big blocks and not a lot of surface detail about them. They are indeed monumental … you can recognise a kind of strength’ (Henry Moore quoted in John Hedgecoe (ed.), Henry Moore. My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist, London, 1986, pp. 150-1).
The physicality of Moore's own mother is echoed in the form of the present work. When discussing another of his seated female figures from the mid-1950s with the critic David Sylvester, he recalled, ‘Seated Woman, particularly her back view, kept reminding me of my mother, whose back I used to rub as a boy when she was suffering from rheumatism. She had a strong, solid figure, and I remember, as I massaged her with some embarrassment, the sensation it gave me going across her shoulder blades and then down and across the backbone. I had the sense of an expanse of flatness yet within it a hard projection of bone. My mother’s back meant a lot to me’ (Henry Moore quoted in ibid, p. 329).
The maternal aspects of Moore’s female figures suggest a timeless quality. This is reinforced in the present work by the reference to antiquity, through the figure’s absent limbs and elegant, textured drapery. Moore had visited Greece for the first time in 1952, and the experience of seeing the remains of ancient sculpture, degraded and worn down over the passage of time, found its way into his work. Combined with the abstracted and simplified features of the figure’s face, the effect is one of a modern yet timeless and universal image.
The depiction of the weighty female figure can be traced back to his early life drawings of the 1920s, when he looked to the paintings of fleshy nudes by Peter Paul Rubens as inspiration for his own work. The women painted by Cézanne similarly informed his work, and he later recalled, ‘Cézanne’s figures had a monumentality about them that I liked. In his Bathers, the figures were very sculptural in the sense of being big blocks and not a lot of surface detail about them. They are indeed monumental … you can recognise a kind of strength’ (Henry Moore quoted in John Hedgecoe (ed.), Henry Moore. My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist, London, 1986, pp. 150-1).
The physicality of Moore's own mother is echoed in the form of the present work. When discussing another of his seated female figures from the mid-1950s with the critic David Sylvester, he recalled, ‘Seated Woman, particularly her back view, kept reminding me of my mother, whose back I used to rub as a boy when she was suffering from rheumatism. She had a strong, solid figure, and I remember, as I massaged her with some embarrassment, the sensation it gave me going across her shoulder blades and then down and across the backbone. I had the sense of an expanse of flatness yet within it a hard projection of bone. My mother’s back meant a lot to me’ (Henry Moore quoted in ibid, p. 329).
The maternal aspects of Moore’s female figures suggest a timeless quality. This is reinforced in the present work by the reference to antiquity, through the figure’s absent limbs and elegant, textured drapery. Moore had visited Greece for the first time in 1952, and the experience of seeing the remains of ancient sculpture, degraded and worn down over the passage of time, found its way into his work. Combined with the abstracted and simplified features of the figure’s face, the effect is one of a modern yet timeless and universal image.