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Henry Moore 1898-1986 Seated Female Nude, 1929 Signed and dated lower right 'Moore 29' Brush, black ink and ink wash, charcoal, white chalk and pencil on paper 23 1/4 x 16 in, 59.2 x 40.6 cm Provenance Sir Michael Sadler, Oxford The Leicester Galleries Ltd. (Ernest Brown & Phillips), London (acquired from the above) Dr. Letterman, UK Waddington Galleries, Ltd., London Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York Jan Krugier Gallery, New York Collection of Joan and Preston Robert Tisch (acquired from the above September 1989) Exhibitions London, The Leicester Galleries (Ernest Brown & Phillips), Ltd., New Year Exhibition of Pictures, Drawings and Sculpture by Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Artists, January 1955, p.7, no.34 Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario (5 November - 31 December 1977); Iwaki City, Fukushima, Shimin Art Gallery Museum (21 January - 12 February 1978); Kanazawa City, Ishikawa, Prefectural Museum of Art (18 February - 26 March 1978); Kumamoto, Kumamoto Municipal Museum (1 April - 23 April 1978); Tokyo, Seibu Gallery (28 April - 31 May 1978) and London, Tate Gallery (28 June - 28 August 1978), The Drawings of Henry Moore, pp.59-61, no.44, illus. p.60 Literature Alan G. Wilkinson, The Drawings of Henry Moore, Tate Gallery, London, 1977, pp.59-60, illus. 44; with incorrect dimensions and number A. Garrould, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Drawings, 1916-1929, The Henry Moore Foundation / Lund Humphries, London, 1996, vol.1, p.212, no.AG 29.20, illus. p.213; with incorrect dimensions This work is registered in the Henry Moore Foundation Archives under no.705 This drawing is a remarkable example from Moore's early oeuvre, created in the second half of 1929. The bold and dexterous line of the figure demonstrates Moore's self-assurance and ability to capture the voluptuous form of the human body on a two-dimensional surface. In 1929 Moore married Irina Radetzky a fellow painter who had met at the Royal College of Art. Shortly after their wedding, the couple moved to Hampstead to join a growing colony of avant-garde artists including Barbara Hepworth and her husband Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Roland Penrose. Seated Female Nude is both one of the earliest studies Moore made of his wife and one of his first nude drawings placed in a clearly defined setting. Irina was able to sit motionless for long periods of time and frequently modelled for Moore, giving his drawings a sculptural sense of serene nobility. The grandiosity of the female body also reveals the influence of Picasso and the weighty Neoclassical figures that had occupied his work after the First World War.