NARRATOR:
Henry Moore’s King and Queen sit regally and relaxed on a small bench. They exude an air of idealized grandeur, reminiscent of ancient statuary. Together, they turn their inscrutable faces to their left, as if gazing toward a distant horizon. Their hands, calm and assured, lie quietly at rest. Moore, the son of a Yorkshire coal miner, considered hands one of the most expressive parts of the human body. Here, he makes them the emotional center of his composition.
Moore felt that this piece, like many of his sculptures, began almost arbitrarily:
HENRY MOORE [ACTOR]:
“The King and Queen is rather strange. I can’t explain exactly how it evolved. Whilst manipulating a small piece of modeling wax, it began to look like a horned, Pan-like, bearded head. Then it grew a crown and I recognized it immediately as the head of a king. Then I added a second figure. I realize now that it was because I was reading stories to Mary, my six-year-old daughter, every night, and most of them were about kings and queens and princesses.”
NARRATOR:
Once dedicated to carving stone or wood, Moore now often worked in bronze, which allowed him to enlarge some of his earlier pieces for public commissions, and make multiples of others. Like much of his later work, Moore intended King and Queen to be placed outdoors—just as you see it here—set in a garden or natural landscape.
As you continue along the path, you can learn more about the Sculpture Garden by pressing 3631.
King and Queen
1952-53
Henry Moore (English, 1898-1986)
On View
Henry Moore is widely considered to be the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century. He entered art school at the end of his service in World War I, and was keenly sensitive to the influence of modern and ancient sculptural traditions, especially the figures of Pre-Columbian Mexico. His mature style emerged during the 1930s while he was a young member of the Surrealist circle in England. In the years following World War II he gained an international reputation with his monumental outdoor figurative works. Although not massive in scale, King and Queen nonetheless conveys an effortless monumentality, and typifies Moore's preference for highly simplified biomorphic shapes. His two barefoot figures rest on a bench for a throne, their noble forms free of all extraneous detail save their crowns.
Details
- Artist Name: Henry Moore (English, 1898-1986)
- Title: King and Queen
- Date: 1952-53
- Medium: Bronze
- Edition: Edition of 5 + 2
- Dimensions: 64-1/2 x 56 x 35 in. (163.8 x 142.2 x 88.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1976.03.S
- Copyright: © The Henry Moore Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Henry Moore; Sculpture 1950-1960
- London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1960-11 to 1960-12
Henry Moore
- Tate Gallery, 1968-07-17 to 1968-09-22
Henry Moore
- Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, 1968 to
- Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beunigen, 1968 to
Henry Moore
- Florence, Forte de Belvedere, 1972-05-20 to 1972-09-30
- Tancock, John, The Connoisseur, pp. 238-240
- Humphries, Lund, Henry Moore, 431 frontispiece, pp 62-65
- Read, Herbert, Henry Moore, pp. 192-193
- Grohmann, Will, The Art of Henry Moore, p. 147
- Hedgecoe, John and Henry Moore, Henry Moore, pp. 186, 217-220, 222
- Jianou, Ionel, Henry Moore,
- Russell, John, Henry Moore, pp. 135, 148, 190, 250-251
- Melville, Robert, Henry Moore, p. 35
- Argan, Giulo Carlo, Henry Moore,
- Neumann, Erich, The Archetypal World of Henry Moore, 1959, pp. 112-115
- Hall, Donald, Henry Moore, The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor, 1966, pp. 8, 120-121, 129-131, 133-134, 136
- James, Philip, Henry Moore on Sculpture, 1966, pp. 108, 241, 244, 246
- M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Henry Moore: Carvings and Bronzes, 1970,
- XXc Siecle, Hommage a Henry Moore, 1972, pp. 11, 46, 84, 112
- Seldis, Henry J., Henry Moore in America, 1973,
- Hedgcoe, John, Henry Moore: Energy in Space, 1973, p. 27
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 5
- Waterman, Pamela, Pacific Horticulture, 2001, p. 30
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1298 p. 391
- Gibson, Thomas, Thomas Gibson Fine Art Advisory Services, 2011,
Additional Artwork by Artist
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