Henry Moore in Bretton Country Park

– Outdoors

About Henry Moore in Bretton Country Park

In 1994, Yorkshire Sculpture Park was proud to present a large number of Henry Moore’s sculptures in the Bretton Country Park and an exhibition of nine rarely seen carvings on loan from the Henry Moore Foundation.

The sculptures in this 1994 exhibition of Henry Moore’s magnificent sixteen bronze sculptures were specifically selected to relate to the rugged and open nature of the park. The exhibition included the first public showing in Europe of the seven metre high Large Upright Internal/External Form cast in 1981. The sculptures were sited to encourage visitors to explore the park and to discover the relationship between art and nature.

The Late Carvings

An exhibition of nine rarely seen carvings, on loan from the Henry Moore Foundation, celebrated Moore’s return to carving following the success of his huge Reclining Figure in travertine marble carved in 1957-58 for the Unesco Headquarters in Paris.

The works reflect the two themes which occupied Moore throughout his long career, namely the reclining figure and mother and child. The exhibition included two mother and child sculptures, one in rosa aurora marble from 1967 and another made from a stalactite of 1978.

These carvings have a refinement to them which, to quote Peter Fuller on Moore’s late work, ‘manifests that quality of tender authority which one associates with the old age of genius. They demonstrate as clearly as the drawings of this period his humanism on the one hand and his love for form on the other.'

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    Large Spindle Piece was based on the shape of a piece of flint with protruding points that Moore found near his Perry Green home. It was also greatly inspired by Moore’s fascination with Michelangelo, which had begun almost 50 years earlier. A Royal Academy Scholarship had enabled Moore to travel to Italy in 1925 where he visited the Sistine Chapel.
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    Large Two Forms can be found in the Country Park – Moore’s favourite area of the Bretton Estate, where he enjoyed seeing his sculptures surrounded by sheep. The colossal sculpture is impressive in both scale and composition, appearing very different from every angle and continuing the theme of points that almost meet, which appears in much of Moore’s work.