After Moore married Irina Radetzky in 1929, the number of drawings from life increased considerably. During the four previous years Moore, as Sculpture Tutor at the Royal College of Art, would quite often sit down alongside his students and draw from the same model. At home in the evenings, however, he could concentrate fully on his own work. In the life drawings of seated figures from about 1929 to 1935, he often chose to sketch from a low viewpoint, placing his model slightly above him so that the legs acquired a bulky monumentality which still has echoes in sculptures executed half-a-century later. The legs are more heavily worked than the rest of the figure.

Seated Figure is one of the first in which Moore concentrates on the legs. He has said of these drawings: ‘I wanted the legs to come out from the pelvis – the closest parts were drawn more strongly’. This drawing, a largely monochrome one in which fine, dark lines float over a grey-brown wash, uses a variety of techniques, such as a wash, smudge and shading, to establish space within the drawing. This is most apparent in the substantial shadows created behind the left arm and under the seat which give the drawing a sense of modelling. The detached right foot resting on a framed drawing of a reclining nude (seemingly also by Moore) gives a surreal quality to this drawing.