
© The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved
LULLABY 1973
Henry Moore (1898 – 1986)
Details
- Dimension
- 64.5 X 51.5 CM
- Media
- LITHOGRAPH
- Accession number
- P5158
Summary
W S Auden (1907-1973) was an English poet. His work used traditional verse forms with a fresh and light contemporary language. Moore decided almost from the outset that his lithographs should not be mere illustrations to Auden's poems but should stand as images in their own right, complementing or contrasting with the poetry. Moore summed up his approach:
‘Two people who are very unlike each other can come together over something common to them both; the fact that Auden was a Yorkshireman, as I am, and that Yorkshire landscape has always been a very exciting element in my life, made a strong link between us’.
For many years Moore had owned a drawing by the French pointillist artist Seurat. Seurat created his images from tiny dots that visually gave no outline to an object thus fusing the object into its surroundings. Moore used this technique, describing it as an entirely new way of drawing, using no outlines and fusing together space and form, light, depths and distances into a marvellous and mysterious unity of vision. There was never any question of introducing colour. Moore was always after a printed image identical to the blackness of the drawing, which described something of the bleak industrial landscape and the rugged high moors of Yorkshire. With Auden's death in 1973, the whole project became a tribute to his memory. The portfolio was printed in an edition of 75.
Glossary
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Drawing
The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.
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Edition
All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.