HENRY MOORE:
1898 - 1986
EDGAR HOLLOWAY (b 1914):
Henry Moore at 80, 1978
Etching on paper
325 x 250 mm
Purchased, 1978
A1.1282
Early Life in Castleford
Henry Spencer Moore was born on the 30 July 1898 in the coal-mining town of Castleford, near Wakefield.
He was the seventh of eight children of Raymond Spencer Moore, and his wife Mary Baker.
He went to the local infant and primary school, and then in 1910, won a scholarship to Castleford Secondary School, which later became a Grammar School.
Even during these early years Moore was interested in art and at the age of 11 he decided to become a sculptor after hearing about the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo. While at secondary school Moore was greatly encouraged by his art teacher Miss Alice Gostick.
Moore passed his exams and in 1915 qualified for further education and although he was determined to apply for a scholarship to the local art college, his parents suggested that he train as a teacher.
The Great War came in the summer that Moore left school. He had just turned sixteen a month before the outbreak of hostility. In 1917, after a short period teaching at a local school, Moore was enlisted in to the army and suffered a gas attack at the battle of Cambrai.
Leeds School of Art & London
Moore returned to Castleford aged 20 and applied for an ex-serviceman's grant and became the first ever student of sculpture at Leeds School of Art in September 1919. He continued to live in Castleford, where he attended Miss Gostick's Peasant Pottery Class in the evenings, travelling to and from Leeds by train each day.
At Leeds College of Art Moore met fellow students Barbara Hepworth, Raymond Coxon and Edna Ginesi. All went on to attended the Royal College of Art in London (1921-1925) where, along with Wakefield born Vivian Pitchforth, they formed what was known as 'the Leeds table'.
London remained Moore’s home for almost the next twenty years. He visited museums and galleries and in particular studied the collections at the British Museum, where he first saw examples of the early Mexican carving that was to greatly influence his own work.
In 1924 Moore was awarded a Royal College of Art travelling scholarship and went to Italy for six months. In the same year he accepted a seven-year appointment as a sculpture instructor at the College, a post which in return for two days teaching a week gave him enough to live on and develop his own work. It was there that he met Irina Radetsky, a painting student at the college, whom he married in 1929.
The late 20s and 30s
1928 marks a major turning point in Moore's career. His talent was being recognised and he received his first public commission, a relief for Charles Holden's new London Transport Headquarters above St James's Park Underground Station. In the same year Moore had his first one-man exhibition in the Warren Gallery in London.
During this period Moore lived in Hampstead close to many aspiring young artists and writers, including Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Herbert Read. He had been a regular visitor to Paris from the early 1920s, but from 1930 onwards he went more frequently and came into contact with artists such as Picasso, Arp and Giacometti. He also became associated with International Surrealist movement at this time.
The War Years
In October 1940 the Blitz had a direct impact on Henry and Irina when their Hampstead home was damaged by a nearby bomb. They decided to move out of London and rented part of an old farmhouse in the small village of Perry Green in Hertfordshire; they were to make ‘Hoglands’ their permanent home. On the 7 March 1946 Irina gave birth to their only child, Mary.
Moore's international reputation began to flourish in the 1940s. However, fame did not come for his sculpture but via the Shelter Drawings that depicted the huddled masses in the London underground during the Blitz. It is these drawings, together with those portraying coal-miners in Castleford, which made Henry Moore a household name.
Public Commissions and International Recognition
Proof that Moore’s reputation was established from the late 1940s onwards is seen by the numerous exhibitions, honours, prizes, and awards that came his way.
For example in 1946 Moore made his first visit to New York for his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
From 1949 to 1956, he was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, London, and of the National Gallery, London from 1955 to 1974.
He won International Sculpture Prizes at the 24th Venice Biennale in 1948 and at the 2nd Sao Paulo Biennale in 1953.
He was awarded the Companion of Honour in 1955, the Order of Merit in 1963, and the Erasmus Prize in 1968.
These are just a few of over seventy awards he gained from over a dozen countries.
Moore also received increasingly prestigious commissions; including the immense Roman travertine marble Reclining Figure 1957-58 for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and his Knife Edge Two Piece 1962 in bronze proudly stands outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
A few years before his death Moore gave his land, studios, houses, cottages, archives and collection of work to the Trustees of the Henry Moore Foundation, the aims of which were to conserve his work and the setting in which it was created and to assist in the promotion of sculpture generally within cultural life. For more information on the work of the Foundation see www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk.
Henry Moore died at the age of 88 on the 31 August 1986. The Daily Telegraph declared that Henry Moore, after Sir Winston Churchill, was the most internationally acclaimed Englishman. His work is certainly represented in almost every important public and private collection around the world, and his sculptures can be seen in more public places than any other sculptor in history.
