Henry Moore

Henry Moore sculpture to fetch £3.5m

A MASSIVE sculpture produced by Perry Green master Henry Moore when he was 84 is set to fetch up to £3.5m on Wednesday (February 3).

News - Reclining Figure by Henry MooreIf the bronze, titled Reclining Figure, realises the estimate, it will be his fourth most valuable work and at 8ft long, worth a staggering £437,500 per foot.

Moore produced a limited edition of nine of these large-scale reclining figures, plus a proof copy for himself, in 1982, just four years before his death aged 88 at the Hoglands home he shared with wife Irina.

One of these Reclining Figures is still owned by the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, while another is owned by the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Caracas, Venezuela. The whereabouts of the others - apart from the one coming up for sale at Sotheby's - is a mystery.

A spokesman for the auctioneers, said: "The subject of the reclining figure, initially inspired by Mexican sculpture and explored in this monumental work, was one of Moore's chief preoccupations throughout his long career."

Moore himself said: "From the very beginning the reclining figure has been my main theme. The first one I made was around 1924 and probably more than half of my sculptures since then have been reclining figures."

The artist moved to Herts during the Second World War after his London home and studio were badly damaged by a German bomb in around 1940.

After selling an elm wood sculpture, also titled Reclining Figure, for £300, he paid £900 for Hoglands, the 17th century house at Perry Green, where he would spend the rest of his life. When he died on August 31, 1986,just four weeks after his 88th birthday, he left £1,284,570 in his will.

The current record sale price for a Henry Moore sculpture is £4,297,250, paid at Christie's in London on June 24, 2008,for his 6ft 10ins high work, Draped Reclining Woman. Before the auction, that too had been expected to fetch up to £3.5 million.