Reclining figure: Angles

Henry Moore described how, as a young boy, he rubbed his mother's broad rheumatic back. This experience suggests a personal reading for the reclining woman, a form that has dominated Moore's sculpture. The maternal image - the mature woman chosen by Moore - has become an archetypal form, an earth mother to be impregnated by wind and rain. In situ, waiting and watching, she embodies instinctual alertness, the apprehension of danger. The sources are a mixture of primitive and classical forms, their reconciliation being a major theme in Moore's work. In this version of the figure, the horizontal arm balances the massive angular shoulder, and the frescoes of Giotto and Masaccio are an acknowledged source for the monumental forms and the taut drapery. As Moore once said: "If a work of sculpture has its own life and form, it will be alive and expansive, seeming larger than the stone or wood from which it is carved. It should always give the impression... of having grown organically, created by pressure from within." He described three fundamental poses: "One is standing, the other is seated and the third is lying down... of the three poses, the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially. The seated figure has to have something to sit on. You can't free it from its pedestal. A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same time. It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity."

Art Gallery Handbook, 1994