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Henry Moore 1898-1986 Two Women and Children, 1945 Signed and dated lower right 'Moore 45' Watercolour, wax crayon, brush and ink, wash and charcoal on paper 18 1/8 x 22 7/8 in, 45.8 x 58.2 cm Provenance Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York (no.8200, photo no.U88) Alexander Liberman, New York E.V. Thaw & Co., New York Mr & Mrs John Hay Whitney, New York (acquired from the above in November 1967) Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 10 May 1999, lot 34 (consigned by the above) Alfred Taubman, New York (purchased at the above sale) Sale: Sotheby's, New York, The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman, 5 November 2015, lot 101T Private Collection, Europe (purchased at the above sale) Literature Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings,1940-49, vol.III, The Henry Moore Foundation/ Lund Humphries, London, 2001, no.AG 45.8, illus. p.236 Two Women and Children relates closely to a series of fourteen 'Family Group' sculptures cast in the mid-1940s (Tate and Metropolitan Museum of Art have works from this suite). The origin of these sculptures lies in a public commission for a school in Impington near Cambridge, proposed by the German architect Walter Gropius in 1939. While this commission was never realised, Moore filled sketchbooks with drawings of the family group in various poses. Two Women and Children is one of the most monumental works from the 'Family Group' drawings and is a remarkable example of the wax resist technique Moore developed before the war. Here he again returns to the motif of the mother and child, which had become a defiant symbol of nurturing love and protection. By applying washes of watercolour to layers of wax crayon, pen and pencil, the contrast between light and shadow is intensified, adding a greater depth and texture. Here, this technique highlights the curves of the bodies and reveals the nature of Moore's drawings not just as preparatory studies, but as singular creative processes.