Moore wrote: ‘There are three fundamental poses of the human figure. One is standing, the other is seated, and the third is lying down… But of all the three poses, the reclining figure gives me the most freedom compositionally and spatially.’
Draped Reclining Mother and Baby was completed when Moore was 85 years old. The work combines his key themes – the reclining figure, the mother and child and internal/external forms. It is also a synthesis of figure and landscape. The reclining figure has always had references to the land for Moore, but a reclining figure with a child is rare in his work. He experimented with the position of the baby, placing it first on and then against the mother’s thigh, but it seemed unprotected until he finally moved it into the cradle of the mother’s arm. The mother’s protective arm, which encloses the child in her concave body, relates to internal and external forms and the seashells in Moore’s collection of found objects.