Sculptural Object in Landscape

Moore used paper to conceptualise sculptural compositions and presented many sculptural ideas in imagined landscapes. Of these, Alan Wilkinson writes that Sculptural Object in a Landscape is ‘one of Moore’s finest’. [1] Although the scene may seem generalised, it represents the valley and hills behind Henry and Irina Moore’s cottage of Burcroft, in Kingston, where they had a home from 1935 to 1940. Moore explained that in this setting ‘for the first time I worked with a three or four mile view of the countryside to which I could relate my sculptures. The space, the distance and the landscape became very important to me as a background and as an environment for my sculpture.’ [2] Long shadows suggest early morning or dusk.

Sculptural Object in a Landscape demonstrates how Moore is imagining immense scale on a small, two-dimensional plane. The imagined object looms in a sparse landscape with a distant horizon. The image does not resemble any actual sculpture – former or future. It suggests his open reclining figures in bronze of the period, but the ‘sculptural object’ more closely resembles a bone, which was a frequently cited source material for Moore. The slender form conveys the simultaneous inherent strength and delicacy of bone. The materiality of bone in this drawing is suggested by the white and yellow wax crayon, which rejects the blue tones of the watercolour wash. The sculptural image therefore seems to stand out against the ground.

A bone would suggest a smaller size, but a sense of the object’s towering scale is indicated by three discrete grazing animals behind. In 1939 Moore had the ambition to work on the scale suggested by the present drawing, but he did not yet have the resources to execute sculpture at this size. [3] It was not until the 1960s that his work truly grew to a massive scale. Therefore, as this drawing indicates, he could only imagine his monumental works within the confines of the page.

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