Feature: Exhibition - Moore at Hatfield House until September 30
Published: 28 April, 2011
by JOHN EVANS
Sir Anthony Caro launched a major open air exhibition of Henry Moore’s work at Hatfield House
HENRY Moore’s links with Hampstead and Hertfordshire were in evidence at the launch of a major open-air show of his sculptures, the largest ever in a historic house setting.
Moore at Hatfield is an important part of celebrations at the family seat of the Cecils to mark their 400 years at the Jacobean mansion.
The backdrop includes house and gardens and the earlier Tudor old palace where Queen Elizabeth I spent her childhood.
Hampstead-based Sir Anthony Caro helped to launch the exhibition, which opened at the weekend, recalling the “wonderful couple of years” he spent working with Moore, some of the innovative techniques and his own debt to him. “He was fun to work with and he was very good to me. And he made drawing something I could understand,” he said.
Himself a master of the abstract, Sir Anthony was clearly impressed with the country house setting, where 14 of Moore’s bronzes are dotted around the grounds. A nine-metre white fibre-glass figure also guards the entrance to the Tudor palace.
In a collaboration with the Tory grandee Lord Salisbury, the Henry Moore Foundation loaned the works for the show. The foundation is based at Perry Green, just 16 miles away, and is where Moore lived and worked for 45 years after moving from his studio home in Parkhill Road, Hampstead, with his wife Irina.
Nine sculptures have just returned from the US where they were exhibited in Denver’s botanical gardens.
Moore (1898-1986) would have approved of such settings. He wrote: “Sculpture is an art of the open air… I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in or on the most beautiful building in the world.”
Curator Dr Anita Feldman, the foundation’s head of collections and exhibits, stressed the importance of the local setting and space given to the works. Moore rarely accepted commissions, but someone could visit the studio and choose a piece. She added: “No matter how abstract Moore’s works, they are derived from organic objects.”
Visitors will see hints of the figurative with the additional inspirations, a rock outcrop, shell, seed, or piece of flint.
All are striking, yet none more than Mother and Child, 1949, a cast from his Family Group, not long after the birth of Irina and Henry’s daughter. But here only the father’s arm remains, resting on the woman’s shoulder.
• Moore at Hatfield, Hatfield House, Herts, until September 30. Tickets from £12.50, concs available. www.hatfield-house.co.uk