Modern British & Irish Art Evening Sale: King Street 26 June 2017

0023528 Modern British & Irish Art Evening Sale: King Street 26 June 2017 Christie's London

Cover image Moore's Family Group 1946 (LH 264).

Six Lots of Moore's work: 5, 8, 12, 23, 26 and 27 together with some complementary images and a substantial amount of textual context and reference on provenance, exhibition history and literature for each lot.

Lot 5 Family Group 1946 (LH 264) with upper estimate of £2.5m sold for £3.3m. Lot 5 has three full page images of the work together with two biographical images, one being of Irina and Henry Moore, Anthony Penrose and Mary Moore with Mother and Child sculpture; photo Lee Miller. There is an image of Lucian Freud's The Pearce Family 1986 on page 34. There is substantial background and contextual reference to Lot 5 including a quote from Moore on page 35 'My desire to understand space made the change to bronze necessary. One should not be dominated by the material' and on page 36 '[Walter] Gropius asked me to do a piece of sculpture for the school. We talked about it and I suggested that a family group would be the right subject' and a quote from John Russell '[With the birth of Moore's daughter] the image of the family took on a new, leaping, unpredictable intensity' and a quote form Penelope Curtis on page 30 '[The Family group series was] Moore's own answer to the new ethos in British sculpture after the war, which returned to a much more recognisable human figure, and responded to the new opportunities for public sculpture arising out of the state support for the arts within a culture of reconstruction'. Other references to Lot 5 include: Barclay Secondary School Stevenage, Walter Gropius, Henry Morris, Family Group 1949, Madonna and Child 1943-44 (LH 226), St. Mathews Church, Shelter Drawings.

Lot 6 Mother and Child Against Open Wall  1956 (LH 418) with full page image on page 53, full page detail on page 55 and a complementary image of Moore's Madonna and Child 1943 (LH 226) on page 54. There is reference to UNESCO and a quote from Moore 'to make a sculpture which has (if only in my mind) a real connection with the purpose of UNESCO and also proper scale, relatiionship or contrast, and be a satisfactory piece of sculpture to me, is not an easy affair' taken from a letter to A. Manuelides dated 25 September 1956 from M. Garlake's Moore's Eclecticism: Difference, Aesthetic Identity and Community in the Architectural Commissions 1938-58 edited by J. Beckett and F. Russell; Henry Moore: Critical Essays, 2003, page 188. 

Lot 12 Seated Woman 1958-59 (LH 440) with full page image of work on Pages 73 and 75. On page 74 there is an image of Moore working on the plaster for Seated Woman. There is discussion on page 74 of techincal and formal sculptural issues relating to the seated form as well as of the psychological context. Moore is quoted from Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, A. Wilkinson, Berkeley 2002 p. 218 'In fact if I were told that from now on I should have stone only for seated figures I should not mind at all'. Moore is also quoted from the same source on the importance of his mother to him. Will Grohmann is quoted from his book The Art of Henry Moore on the subject of 'Seated Figures'.   

Lot 23 Standing Figures with Rock Background 1946 (HMF 2383) with full page image of work on page 125 and two complementary images of other works by Moore: Draped Standing Figures in Red 1944 (HMF 2253) on page 126 and Phemius and Telemachus, The Rescue Sketchbook p.37 1944 (HMF 2289) on page 127. There is discussion on drapery on pages 126 and 127 with a quote from Moore on the subject taken from Henry Moore: Work - Theory - Impact by C. Lichtenstern, page 151. Mention is made of Edward Sackville-West's radio play The Rescue and Moore's The Rescue Sketchbook. On p