Footnotes

Provenance
Marion and Gustave Ring, Washington D.C.
Private Collection, New York
With James Goodman Gallery, New York
With Waddington Galleries, London, 2004, where acquired by the family of the present owners
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Florence, Forte di Belvedere, Henry Moore, 20 May-30 September 1973 (another cast)
Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Henry Moore; Esculturas, Dibujos, Grabados. Obras de 1921 a 1982, March 1983, cat.no.E85 (another cast)
Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculptural Garden, Selections from the Collection of Marion and Gustave Ring, 17 October 1985-12 January 1986, cat.no.35 (this cast)
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Focus on the Collection: Henry Moore, July 2004-March 2005, cat.no.8 (another cast)

Literature
Robert Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, 1921-1969, Thames and Hudson, London, 1970, p.100, cat.no.174 (monumental stone version illustrated, pp.100-101)
Franco Russoli and David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Sculpture, With Comments by the Artist, London, Arthur A. Bartley, 1981, p.74, cat.no.121 (col.ill., another cast)
Exh.cat., Henry Moore; Esculturas, Dibujos, Grabados. Obras de 1921 a 1982, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas, 1983, p.100, cat.no.E85 (col.ill, another cast)
Virginia Wageman (ed.), Selections from the Collection of Marion and Gustave Ring, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1985, cat.no.35, (coll.ill., as Reclining Figure)
David Sylvester, (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1921-1948, Lund Humphries, London, 1988, Volume 1, p.11, cat.no.184 (monumental stone version illustrated, pp.112-113, no. 191)

It is alleged that James Bolivar Manson, director of the Tate Gallery between 1930 and 1938, once said 'Over my dead body will Henry Moore ever enter the Tate'. Yet just one year following his retirement, the Tate (under the directorship of John Rothenstein) gladly accepted Moore's large green Hornton stone carving Recumbent Figure of 1938. Of all Moore's work perhaps, this carving (for which the present work is a maquette) came to symbolise not just Moore's output but to act as shorthand for modernity in 20th Century Britain.

Recumbent Figure was commissioned by the architect Serge Chermayeff, who was building himself a modernist home on the Sussex Downs. The carving was to be positioned at the intersection of Chermayeff's terrace and garden, the connection point between his contemporary architecture and the ancient rolling countryside beyond. Moore recalled 'My figure looked out across the great sweep of the Downs and her gaze gathered the horizon. The sculpture had no specific relationship to the architecture. It had its own identity and did not need to be on Chermayeff's terrace, but it so to speak enjoyed being there, and I think introduced a humanising element; it became a mediator between modern house and ageless land' (Henry Moore in Sculpture in the Open Air, British Council film, 1955, transcript reprinted in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot 2002, p.258–9).

Chermayeff ran into financial woes, and Recumbent Figure was returned to the artist, from whom it was purchased by the Tate in 1939. The carving was immediately shipped to New York to be showcased at the British Pavilion of that year's World's Fair, and due to the outbreak of war this intended brief excursion turned into a several-year-long stay. The work was displayed at MOMA and this unplanned circumstance greatly bolstered Moore's reputation in North America. The museum's director wrote in 1946 'It was with great regret that we saw it leave. It had won wide esteem among the museum visitors.' (John James Sweeny, letter to John Rothenstein, 7 March 1946, Tate Public Records TG 4/9/568/1).

Following Recumbent Figure's return to the UK, the carving was featured in Battersea Park's first open-air exhibition, where again it drew much attention. Vogue magazine featured the work across its pages alongside sharply dressed models, appropriating Moore's carving as a symbol of the newness so appreciated by its fashion forward readership. In contrast, cartoonists satirised the figure, and in this context the carving's status as a modern icon was subverted to poke fun at politics of the day. Through such broad exposure the carving soon became one of the most famous modern works within the Tate's collection, a status confirmed when its image was included prominently as part of the tiling display at Pimlico station.

At the time Moore carved the four-and-a-half-foot Recumbent Figure it was his largest and most ambitious work to date and only made possible by his recent move from Hampstead in London to Burcroft in Kent. The larger studio-space, ability to work outdoors and the hiring of Bernard Meadows as an assistant enabled Moore to increase the scale of his work substantially. To aid this new practice Moore produced a maquette for Recumbent Figure in clay. This is the first time in his career that he adopted a method of scaling up, which would become a mainstay of his sculptural practice thereafter. Meadows recalled that he and Moore attempted, unsuccessfully at first, to cast the clay maquette to lead in a meadow field at Burcroft. Moore subsequently cast the clay to a bronze edition in 1945, to which the present cast belongs.

Not only does Recumbent Figure represent one of Moore's earliest maquettes, most importantly it possesses one of the earliest instances of piercing the form, a major development of a highly important device the artist would frequently draw upon throughout his career. Speaking of this progression at the time, Moore stated that 'The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to another, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form' (Henry Moore, 'A Sculptor Speaks', Listener, 18 August 1937, pp.338–40).