MOORE, HENRY
1898 Castleford/UK–1986 Much Hadham/UK

Title: Head: Boat Form.
Date: 1963 (draft).
Technique: Bronze, brown-patinated.
Measurement: 15 x 8.5 x 7 cm.
Notation: Signed and numbered on kower right edge: Moore 8/9.
Base: Wooden base: 2.5 x 9.5 x 8.5cm (total measurements: 17.5 x 9.5 x 8.5cm).


The work is listed on the Henry Moore Foundation’s official website under catalogue number LH 509. (www.catalogue.henry-moore.org)



This bronze was cast by Fiorini Ltd, London, between 1963 and 1974 in an edition of 9 copies + 2AP.



This work is the model for Henry Moore’s large-scale sculpture "Large Totem Head" from 1968, which stands in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (see Henry Moore Foundation No. LH 577).



Provenance:
- - Annely Juda, London

- Private collection South Germany


Literature:
- Melville, Robert: Henry Moore – Skulpturen und Zeichnungen 1921–1969, Munich 1971, cat. rais. no. 657, ill.

- Bowness, Alan (ed.): Henry Moore. Sculpture and Drawings (Vol. 3), London 1965, cat. rais. no. 509, ill.



- This work was followed in 1969 by a 2.44-metre-tall version, which is held, amongst others, in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London

- "Head: Boat Form" is exemplary of the reduced and nature-inspired formal language in Moore’s late work

- No other example has yet been offered on the international auction market



The Grandeur of the European Avant-Garde of the Twentieth Century

“Form—the shape of things—is the most exciting thing in my life. Through it I express my visions and reactions—I think in forms.”

— Henry Moore, in John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, London, 1968, p. 121

Henry Moore was born on 30 July 1898 in Castleford, Yorkshire, England. After initial artistic training at the Leeds School of Art, he entered the prestigious Royal College of Art in London in 1921 to study sculpture. In 1928, Moore held his first solo exhibition at London’s Warren Gallery.

He achieved recognition early in his career, rising to become one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Moore became a symbol of Britain’s cultural reconstruction. In 1946, the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted its first major retrospective to him, and in 1948 he received the International Sculpture Prize at the 24th Venice Biennale.

By around 1960, Moore stood at the height of his artistic achievement. The exploration of human existence—particularly the relationship between humanity and nature, as well as the female body—remained central concerns, though his visual language continued to evolve. During this period, his work was increasingly defined by abstract, biomorphic forms inspired by the natural world.

The financial freedom and international recognition brought by his success enabled Moore to realise his vision of monumental sculpture, works that continue to shape urban and museum landscapes around the world. Moore died on 31 August 1986, leaving behind an oeuvre of more than ten thousand works.



The Shape of Things

Head: Boat Form of 1963 exemplifies the reduced formal vocabulary of Moore’s late work. The viewer encounters a small-scale bronze which, when seen frontally, resembles the shape of an almond, its upper and lower edges flattened.

The reverse swells outward in a convex curve, while the front folds inward concavely. At its centre, an oval cavity opens up, divided by a delicate bridge. Through this interplay of radically reduced forms, Moore creates an almost limitless field of associations.

Depending on one’s perspective, the object might evoke a head, a sliced fruit, or female genitalia. Moore deliberately avoids unequivocal legibility, although the title offers the viewer a decisive clue. Especially when the sculpture is positioned horizontally and rests on its convex reverse side, the form of a boat emerges—its flowing contour seeming to glide across an imaginary sea.

The present work served as the model for the 2.44-metre-high bronze Large Totem Head, realised in 1968 and now, among other locations, held at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It forms part of a gift of thirty-six sculptures that Moore ceremoniously donated to the Tate in 1978.

Particularly in his later career, it became customary for Moore to test monumental sculptures not merely through sketches on paper, but by creating smaller, fully three-dimensional objects in order to explore their spatial impact.

“A small sculpture only three or four inches high can have monumental power (…) If it has this monumentality, you can enlarge it to almost any size and it will still look right; it will remain convincing.”

— Henry Moore, in Warren Forma, Five British Sculptors: Work and Talk, New York, 1964, pp. 67, 73

The impact of Moore’s work does not arise from scale alone. His forms speak a universal language—never entirely fixed in meaning, yet accessible to all.

Sophie Ballermann



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