Draped Seated Woman

Henry Moore was a war artist in the Second World War. He made a series of 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 made a series of sculptures of draped human forms in the 1950s after he was…