Moore’s association with the London Zoo dated back to the 1920s when he first met Solly Zuckerman, then a young biologist from South Africa, newly arrived at the Zoo to take up a research post. Zuckerman (created a baron in 1971 for his scientific work) was at that time part of the Hampstead circle which included Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping, having met them when the young and then unknown artists went to the Zoo to sketch. ‘More than twenty years later,’ wrote Zuckerman in the introduction to the Animals in the Zoo album, ‘I successfully urged the Zoological Society to reinstate a lapsed system of making awards for zoological achievement.’ The idea was that the winners should receive not money prizes or books but a work of art. Moore donated editions of three abstract animal form bronzes, Bird 1955 (LH 393), Maquette for Animal Head 1956 (LH 395) and Animal Form 1959, which Zuckerman described as ‘the most sought after prizes ever to be awarded to aspiring scientists’. Moore’s link with the Zoo was strengthened through another close friendship with Sir Julian Huxley, eminent biologist and Fellow of the Zoological Society.

Moore began this series in 1981, when he was already finding the physical effort of wielding the etching needle difficult. Most of the studies are based on sketches made a couple of years previously to amuse his grandson Gus, which had been interpreted from photographs taken at the Zoo by Moore’s assistant Michel Muller, who remarked that on one occasion it was so cold and wet that many of the animals did not want to leave their enclosures to be photographed.

In his introduction Zuckerman continued: "The animals which he has depicted are his own, seized with infinite sensitivity by his eye . . . The delicacy of his line does not deprive the elephant of any of its solidity . . . His rhinoceros is planted like rock into the ground . . . His vultures gaze skywards in anticipation. One can almost see the flick of the ear of the young antelope."

- David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Prints & Portfolios, Cramer, Geneva, 2009.