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Reclining Figures: Ideas for Sculpture (recto); Listen (verso)
Reclining Figures: Ideas for Sculpture (recto); Listen (verso)
Reclining Figures: Ideas for Sculpture (recto); Listen (verso)

Reclining Figures: Ideas for Sculpture (recto); Listen (verso)

Maker (British, 1898–1986)
Datecirca 1939 (misdated later by the artist 1942) (recto); circa 1939 and/or 1958 (verso)
MediumPencil and pen and ink on wove paper (recto); pen and ink, crayon, and watercolor on wove paper (verso)
DimensionsSheet: 10-11/16 x 7-1/8 in. (27.2 x 18.1 cm)
Credit LineThe Joel Starrels, Jr. Memorial Collection
CopyrightSee text entries.
Object number1974.261
Status
Not on view
Description

The drawings of 1939–40 are among the most richly inventive of all of Henry Moore’s studies for sculptures. Although none of the sketches on this sheet resulted in a finished sculpture, this drawing is, nonetheless, an instructive example of the way in which Moore filled a page with a flood of ideas when starting a new sculptural piece.

Notice how he set different images on top of earlier pencil studies he had rejected, and sometimes he reworked to a higher degree of finish the original underlying pencil sketch of a design Moore particularly liked. Despite the re-workings and crowding of images, order prevails in the horizontal stacking of the many reclining figures. At times, the artist underscores this principle by the suggestion of a ground-line or natural setting that establishes a fictive context for the individual forms.

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