Bird (1955) 'One of the things I would like to think my sculpture has in force, a strength, a life, a
vitality from inside...'
Many of Henry Moore's animal sculptures, especially the animal heads and animal
forms, owe more to the imagination than to observation. The psychological and
mythological element is omnipresent. This differentiates Moore's animal sculptures from
those produced by the observers and recorders of animal subjects, and no less from the
Renaissance artists whose interest in animals centred round man. For example, the
equestrian portrait shows the horse as a noble extension of the rider's prestige. Although
Moore has never ceased to admire the finest manifestations of this classical kind of art
he reacted against it in favour of the art of ancient civilizations and the primitive artefacts
he observed in archeological and ethnological museums.
Drawing for Moore is an obsessive activity embracing studies of form of various kinds,
ideas for sculpture, and what may be described as inspired doodles. Even within the
limited subject of this book the drawings display such diversity compared with the
consistency in his sculptural treatment, that it is necessary to distinguish the main kinds
of drawings which here take their place alongside the sculpture under thematic headings.
There are the rapid notations of domestic animals — goats, sheep, cows —made during
stays in the country: 'part of my student studies were animals in action'. We see the
continuation of this practice in the studies of goats in a notebook dated 1921. The now
famous Sheep Sketchbook of 1972 has familiarized the public with Moore's superb skill
in his more deliberate studies from life of his favourite animal. Affection for and insight
into the nature of this creature are implicit in all the drawings, which are mental as well
as visual reflections on the various stages of the life of sheep. They are not difficult to
appreciate.
Moore's studies of bone form, however, demand an imaginative participation from the
viewer, a basic interest in form. They include 'transformation' drawings in which partly
invented bone shapes become a pretext for incorporating other figures or objects. Some
of the Elephant Skull etchings are based on direct observation, others extract from its
convolutions the sculptor's own analogies - caverns and corridors, even a fantastic
creature, the Cyclops - that engage our imagination. We marvel at a mind so inventive, a
hand so assured.
The kind of drawing grouped under, but not limited to, the heading Fantastic and
Fabulous Animals comes closest in spirit to much of his animal sculpture. One might
label it 'the alternative vision' — what the mind, perhaps rather the unconscious mind, of
the artist discovers. 'I am conscious of the psychological and associational element in
my work,' says Moore. So alongside the fantastic we find also the dark, the horrendous,
unambiguously expressed.
Moore's art is far from simple; it incorporates many aspects of both his life and
background. First, that of his home, a mining town, grim but friendly, with the Yorkshire
moors not too far distant. There among the grazing sheep and outcrops of rock Moore
would pick up and study a sheep's skull, the breastbone of a bird. 'Since boyhood I have
always been interested in bones.' Not for him as reminders of mortality but because they
have once served a function, borne living weight. As for the rocks, they are the bones of
the earth, the underlying structure on which the sculptor insists in his interpretations of
human and animal form. It therefore comes as no surprise that among his many
variations on the reclining form he should have invented a
Reclining Figure: Bone 1974
carved in Roman travertine - the material that most resembles bone texture. In Goat's
Head 1952 he celebrates the hardness of bone, its knobbiness; in Standing
Figure: Knife
Edge 1961 the fineness of bone combined with tensile strength; whilst in his Elephant
Skull etchings he explores its structural miracles.
Moore's sculpture continually reminds' us of growth and pressure from within: in
tappeals to him: 'Mexican sculptures have a cruel hardness that is the opposite of other
qualities I like in European art.' Everyone who knows Moore's early Reclining Figures is
aware of the sculptor's debt to the Chacmool Aztec carving which inspired it. Moore
found the multiplicity of view that he favours in other pre-Columbian carvings, such as
the Plumed Serpent.
Bird's head with serpentine tail; Scythian 5th-4th century BC; gold
.
During one of my conversations with Moore, as we considered other animal portrayals of
the past, Moore was attracted by the Bird's
head with serpentine tail of Scythian origin —
a masterly summing-up of the essence of both creatures in a tiny gold ornament.
Ancient Egyptian carvings combine stylization with natural observation, as illustrated in
the Head of a Cow, carved in alabaster. This animal, deified through its association with
Hathor, the protectress of women, has been carved with evident affection . Moore
commented: 'the sculptor has perfectly captured the soft docility of the young cow. The
Egyptians had a great feeling for animals, and this is one I love.' In view of the
tenderness with which Moore has drawn sheep, one is not surprised that he also
admires the Head of a Ewe executed in baked clay five thousand years ago.
Head of a ewe; Sumerian, from Babylonia c. 2900 BC
