Group of Shelterers

If it were not for the title and the context of Moore’s other work from the period, one might not recognise that this drawing depicts a shelter in the London Underground during the Blitz. Moore first saw groups of citizens sheltering in the Underground when returning to his Hampstead studio on the fourth night of the Blitz. He tended to drive, but on this occasion opted for public transport and was moved by the scenes that he saw. At Belsize Park he was not allowed to leave the Underground for an hour while there were aircraft overhead. He was so inspired by the mass of bodies using the platforms as their shelter that he began a series of drawings. He would travel to the Underground two or three times a week specifically to witness the scenes, where he took notes or made small sketches away from the crowds.

In his studio he would then create compositions in a sketchbook and develop some of the images into larger drawings. Group of Shelterers stems from the central image on a page of his First Shelter Sketchbook. Above the sketch are a group of seated figures wrapped in blankets, and below, two further masses of seated and reclining figures, which have not been delineated into individualised figures. This anonymity is common in Moore’s shelter drawings.

John Russell described Moore’s Underground crowd scenes as having ‘even a foretaste of what Belsen and Buchenwald would look like on the day of liberation’. [1] The figures are reclining but there is tension in their poses. The figure on the left pushes his or her body upwards through pressure on the arm. Two figures just to the right of centre are sitting firmly upright, looking outwards at unseen or imagined activity.

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