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Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue

Red Notebook 1969-77

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Red Notebook 1969-77
Red Notebook 1969-77
Red Notebook 1969-77

Red Notebook 1969-77

Date1969-77
Artwork TypeSketchbooks
Catalogue NumberSKB 69
Date Order NumberAG 69-77.1 to AG 69.77.58
Paperoff-white medium-weight wove paper
Dimensionsboards: 260 × 185 mm
Ownershipdisbanded - see individual pages for ownership
More Information

Disbanded notebook, at one time known as Notebook 3, originally bound in red cloth-covered boards 260 x 185mm containing 80 pages of off-white medium-weight wove paper 254 x 176mm in ten signatures of eight plus front and rear endpapers. The pages are numbered upper right on the recto starting at the front endpaper; many are similarly numbered upper left on the recto and some bear numbers in other corners that relate to ideas for graphic work. The last six pages from the fifth signature, the whole of the sixth and seventh and the first page of the eighth are either blank or missing. Pages remaining in the notebook in 1984 were signed at that time. The notebook, which contains ideas for a number of etchings and lithographs, was begun in 1969 with studies of the elephant skull, see CGM 109-146, and continued intermittently from both the front and back until 1974, with some pages being redrawn on one or more occasion up to 1977.  

Moore was given at least nine red-covered notebooks in 1968 by Pieter Brattinga, the Dutch designer of his Otterlo exhibition catalogue, in which he drew over the following decade. This appears to have been the first, although it was at one time known as Notebook 3. In the mid-1980s seven of Moore's sketchbooks were given numbers, but as this numerical system was not chronological it has not been retained.

Moore's interest in an elephant skull given to him in 1966 by Julian and Juliette Huxley was reawakened by the visit in 1969 of Gérald Cramer, who had commissioned some prints for his Geneva gallery. Moore made a number of drawings before deciding that etching was a more suitable medium for his detailed study of the skull; the resulting Elephant Skull album contained 28 etchings.

ExhibitionsPublished References