Draped Seated Woman 1957–58
| Draped Seated Woman 1957–58 | |
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| Artist | Henry Moore |
| Year | 1957-8 |
| Type | Bronze |
| Dimensions | 185.5 cm (73.0 in) |
| Location | Yorkshire Sculpture Park |
Draped Seated Woman 1957–58 (LH 428) is a bronze sculpture by the British artist Henry Moore, made in a series of six castings in the 1950s. The sculpture depicts a female figure resting in a seated position, with her legs folded back to her right, her left hand supporting her weight, and her right hand on her right leg. The drapery emphasises the female figure, but the facial features are abstracted and barely picked out.
Henry Moore was a war artist in the Second World War. He made a series drawings of people in London sheltering from the Blitz in the Underground, swathed in thick clothes. These drawings sparked an interest in drapery which was renewed by the classical sculptures that Moore saw during a trip to Greece in 1951. He was attracted by the ability of the drapery to draw attention to some parts of the human form by lying tightly on the shoulders, thighs or breasts while concealing other parts where the wrapping falls slack, and also by the varied textures created by small and large folds in the material.
Moore make a series of sculptures of draped human forms in the 1950s after he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the new UNESCO Headquarters building in Paris. He wanted to create a figure in an architectural context, and turned to the seated human form. The first work in the series in 1955 was a maquette, Draped Seated Woman: Figure on Steps (LH 427), cast in a series of 10. This became the working model for the full-size sculpture that became his Draped Seated Woman 1957–58. He also made a similar work Draped Reclining Woman 1957-58. Moore ultimately abandoned these ideas for the UNESCO commission, and his UNESCO Reclining Figure 1957-58 (LH 416) is a much more abstract reclining form in travertine.
Moore's sculpture depicts a female figure in a seated position. It measures approximately 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) long, 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) tall, and weighs approximately 1.6 tonnes (1.8 tons). It is usually displayed mounted on a flat seat with raised arms to either side.
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