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Property from a private American collection HENRY MOORE (1898-1986) Rocking Chair No. 2 bronze wi...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:750,000.00 - 900,000.00 USD
Property from a private American collection HENRY MOORE (1898-1986) Rocking Chair No. 2 bronze wi...
Property from a private American collection
HENRY MOORE
(1898-1986)
Rocking Chair No. 2
bronze with brownish black patina
height: 10 7/8 in. (27.6 cm)
length: 12 1/4 in. (31.2 cm)
depth: 3 in. (7.6 cm)
cast in 1950 in an edition of six
Estimate: $750,000-900,000 <p>Provenance
Private Collection, England
Waddington Galleries, London (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner <p>Exhibited
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Henry Moore, November-December 1960, no. 1 (illustrated)
London, Bradford Art Galleries and Museum, Cartwright Hall, and Lister Park, Henry Moore, 80th Birthday Exhibition, 1978, no. 63 (illustrated)
London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Henry Moore 80/80, 1978, p. 20 (illustrated)
Madrid, Palacio de Velazquez; Palacio de Cristal, and Parque de El Retiro, Henry Moore, Sculpture, Drawings, Graphics, 1921-1981, May-August, 1981, p. 105, no. 199 (illustrated in color)
Venezuela, Museo de Arte Contemporanco de Caracas, Henry Moore, March, 1983, no. E67 (illustrated in color)
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Henry Moore, September 16-December 11, 1988, p. 88, no. 109 (illustrated in color)
London, Waddington Galleries, Henry Moore Sculpture from the 40s and 50s, May 3-June 3, 1995, p. 11, no. 3 (illustrated in color) <p>Literature
Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, pl. 113 (another cast illustrated)
Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture & Drawings, 1921-1969, London, 1970, p. 354, no. 399 (another cast illustrated)
Alan Bowness ed., Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture,1949-1954, London, 1986, vol. 2, p. 28, no. 275 (another cast illustrated, pl. 15)
In 1950, Henry Moore was at the height of his career. In that year he was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain to make the large Reclining Figure for the Festival of Britain and he executed a number of important sculptures, including the series which would finally comprise four different versions of Rocking Chair. The present work, which is the second in the series, differs from Rocking Chair 1 (Bowness no. 274) in various ways. The back of the chair is elongated, serving to accentuate the impression of swinging movement. The baby is also balanced on the knee of the mother, which creates a more compelling sense of equilibrium than in the first version, which is also smaller in scale. Rocking Chair 3 (Bowness no. 276) differs again in the heavily ribbed skirt, a feature that would appear in several of his later reclining figures, while Rocking Chair 4 (Bowness no. 277) is miniature in scale and also portrays the mother holding the baby aloft. Taken as a whole, the series is much lighter in feel than the many reclining figures that Moore was working on during this period, which emphasized the weight of the human figure. By contrast, the Rocking Chair sculptures, due to their open forms that allow for the play of light to a far greater extent, give the impression of lyrical movement, which serves the subject perfectly.
These pieces, like much of Moore's work, present a fine integration of ancient myth with modernity. The Rocking Chair sculptures show the influence of certain Cycladic marble figures as well as Etruscan and early Roman bronzes with which Moore was familiar from his frequent visits to the British Museum in London, where he garnered a great deal of inspiration. The subject of maternity itself was one with which Moore had been preoccupied for many years, not least because of important commissions to execute figures of the Madonna and Child for various ecclesiastical institutions.
Characteristically, the subject was also both timeless and personal, as he became a father with the birth of his daughter Mary in 1946. Furthermore, among many other works of art from various historical periods, Moore finally owned a Catalan polychromed wooden figure of the Virgin and Child, as well as a French limestone group of the Education of the Virgin in early 16th century style. Moore's range of cultural references was understood by Herbert Read, who commented that "throughout his work a discursive power, an implicit potency, that comes from some deep level of consciousness...The very limitation of Moore's subject matter - the reclining figure, the mother and child, the family group, forms that might be foetal, blind vermicular heads - indicates a canalised strength, reaching deep into the unconscious" (quoted in Alan Bowness, Henry Moore: complete Sculpture, London, 1986, p. 7).
Moore himself often spoke of his attraction to the subject of mother and child, which he saw as profoundly symbolic of the art of sculpture itself, of the relationship between forms of differing size. He described the series titled Internal-External Forms as "a sort of embryo being protected by an outer form, a mother and child idea...something young and growing being protected by an outer shell" (Henry Moore, quoted in Philip James (ed.), Henry Moore on Sculpture, London, 1966, p. 247).
Indeed, it is quite significant that a sheet of studies for the Rocking
Chair series executed in 1948 also contains a sketch for one of the Internal-External form sculptures that Moore mentions above. Holding their diminutive offspring aloft, it is tempting to read Moore's supple Rocking Chair mothers as metaphors for the vocation of the sculptor. For Moore the sculptor was always an archetypal, instinctive creator whose task it is to fashion and give birth to new entities.
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