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Lot Essay
Moore began making sculptures in 1922, and among his first surviving independent works in carved stone is Mother and Child (Sylvester, no. 3). This subject emerged as a theme and an "obsession" (as he called it) in different periods of his life, with the majority of the sculptures coming in clusters at the beginning and near the end of his career. "Moore continuously found new ways of exploring the theme so that the imagery could take on meaning beyond the aesthetics of its form. The development of the mother and child imagery reveals that Moore's involvement in this theme reaches beyond maternity to an inquiry into birth and creativity. The theme of the mother and child, the mother giving birth, the child struggling to emerge from the maternal womb, is like the stone giving birth to the form, the form struggling to emerge from the block of stone" (G. Gelburd, intro., Mother and Child: The Art of Henry Moore, exh. cat., Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York, 1987, p. 37).
Moore had done more than twenty sculptures on the Mother and Child theme when he received a commission in 1943 to carve a Madonna and Child for St. Matthew's Church in Northampton, England (Bowness, no. 226). The project required that Moore reflect upon the long tradition of western religious art, and to focus on the ways in which a Madonna and Child differs from a purely secular Mother and Child. "the Madonna and Child should have an austerity and a nobility," Moore wrote, "and some touch of grandeur (even hieratic aloofness) which is missing in the everyday Mother and Child" (quoted in D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture, with comments by the artist, London, 1981, p. 90). The universal and monumental aspect of this stone carving (completed in 1944), with the Madonna seated in serene repose, became a paradigm for many of the Mother and Child sculptures of later years, including the present work, so the religious aspect of the subject is entirely subsumed within their secular context.
The birth of the Moore's daughter Mary in 1946 inspired the artist to create his three- and four-figure Family Groups, which took precedence over the Mother and Child theme for the next several decades. In the years after 1975, however, Moore created more sculptures on the Mother and Child theme than in any previous period. Moore worked on two monumental sculptures using this subject during this time, Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, 1983 (Bowness, no. 822), and Mother and Child: Block Seat, 1983-1984 (Bowness, no. 838), for which the present sculpture is the intermediate-sized working model. Gail Gelburd observed that:
The Mother and Child: Block Seat is the Internal External form [cf. lot 229] expanded so that the fetus has just emerged from the enveloping mother figure. It is the Madonna and Child simplified. In the maquette of 1981 the original idea was more convoluted and more reminiscent of the 1944 Madonna and Child. But as the artist reworked the image to larger than life size he turned to the simplification found in the Internal/External forms. He finds in the simplification monumentality for his last major work.
(op. cit., p. 37)
Moore had done more than twenty sculptures on the Mother and Child theme when he received a commission in 1943 to carve a Madonna and Child for St. Matthew's Church in Northampton, England (Bowness, no. 226). The project required that Moore reflect upon the long tradition of western religious art, and to focus on the ways in which a Madonna and Child differs from a purely secular Mother and Child. "the Madonna and Child should have an austerity and a nobility," Moore wrote, "and some touch of grandeur (even hieratic aloofness) which is missing in the everyday Mother and Child" (quoted in D. Mitchinson, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture, with comments by the artist, London, 1981, p. 90). The universal and monumental aspect of this stone carving (completed in 1944), with the Madonna seated in serene repose, became a paradigm for many of the Mother and Child sculptures of later years, including the present work, so the religious aspect of the subject is entirely subsumed within their secular context.
The birth of the Moore's daughter Mary in 1946 inspired the artist to create his three- and four-figure Family Groups, which took precedence over the Mother and Child theme for the next several decades. In the years after 1975, however, Moore created more sculptures on the Mother and Child theme than in any previous period. Moore worked on two monumental sculptures using this subject during this time, Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, 1983 (Bowness, no. 822), and Mother and Child: Block Seat, 1983-1984 (Bowness, no. 838), for which the present sculpture is the intermediate-sized working model. Gail Gelburd observed that:
The Mother and Child: Block Seat is the Internal External form [cf. lot 229] expanded so that the fetus has just emerged from the enveloping mother figure. It is the Madonna and Child simplified. In the maquette of 1981 the original idea was more convoluted and more reminiscent of the 1944 Madonna and Child. But as the artist reworked the image to larger than life size he turned to the simplification found in the Internal/External forms. He finds in the simplification monumentality for his last major work.
(op. cit., p. 37)