Ideas for Sculpture: Reclining Figures 1942 Recto Ideas for Sculpture: Seated Figures 1942 Verso Sketchbook 1942, p.41. Recto: Pencil, wax crayon, chalk, wash, pen and ink, gouache. Signature (added later): pen and ink I.I. Moore, undated. Archive No. HMF 2029. Verso: pencil, wash, pen and ink. The first numbered page in our sketchbook is 31. The first 29 pages are either unnumbered and unidentified or missing.1 229 x 178 mm (9 x 7 inches) Provenance: Leon J. Salter; Alvin Greenstein; Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, New York 1979; The Marina and Willy Staehelin-Peyer Collection Literature: Ann Garrould, Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1940-49, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol.3, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 2001, cat. AG 42.130r and AG 42.130v, p.151, recto and verso, illus.		HENRY MOORE Castleford, West Yorkshire 1898 ~ 1986 Much Hadham, Hertfordshire Henry Moore's drawings were always seen as an integral part of his output as an artist However, they were on the whole related to his sculptures. Until the late 1940s it was in drawing that he worked out his ideas, making variants of forms or working out views from different angles. However, he eventually gave up drawing as preparatory for sculpture because models give all viewpoints at once. The Reclining Figure emerged as Moore's 'signature theme' from 1925. There were many precedents for this from the Totec-Mayan sculpture, The Chacmool,2 Trocadero Museum, Paris and Etruscan funerary monuments to Cézanne's bathers and Matisse's odalisques. It was the female form that interested Moore most. By 1940 his drawings of these forms revealed a biomorphic, skeletal, metallic type; studies for sculpture in lead and later bronze. Our sheet falls into this category. When the Second World War broke out Moore was too old to fight again for his country. However, he was invited to be an official war artist by his friend, Sir Kenneth Clark. From 7th September 1940 Moore made many moving drawings of sleeping figures in the London Underground stations, used as air raid shelters during the blitz of the city. It was ultimately these drawings of frightened rows of people, sharing the same ghastly experience, which encouraged the public to appreciate his reclining figures. The Seated Figures on the verso seem to have been more strongly influenced by Moore's admiration for Picasso's female figures than any other source. Verso: Seated Figures 1. A. Garrould, op.cit., p.150. 2. Ian Dejardin in AA. VV., Henry Moore at Dulwich Picture Gallery, exh. cat., 12th May –12 September, 2004, p.67.