Henry Moore

1 portrait of Henry Moore

© National Portrait Gallery, London/ DACS 2021

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Henry Moore

by Ida Kar
half-plate film negative, 1954
Purchased, 1999
Photographs Collection
NPG x134700

Sitterback to top

  • Henry Moore (1898-1986), Sculptor. Sitter in 99 portraits, Artist or producer of 1 portrait.

Artistback to top

  • Ida Kar (1908-1974), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 1567 portraits, Sitter in 137 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Freestone, Clare (appreciation) Wright, Karen (appreciation), Ida Kar Bohemian Photographer, 2011 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 10 March to 19 June 2011), p. 63 Read entry

    Born in Yorkshire, the son of a miner, Moore studied at Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art, later teaching there until 1932. He participated in the avant-garde groups the Seven and Five Society and Unit One, and in the international surrealist exhibitions in London (1936) and Paris (1938). In 1948 Moore won the International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale and was one of the featured artists at the Festival of Britain (1951) and Germany's documenta 1 (1955). This photograph dates from Kar's first visit to Moore's studio at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. The sculptor wrote to Kar the following year regarding a request by Vogue to use this image in their November 1955 issue to publicise Moore's Leicester Galleries exhibition of 'ten important pieces of recent sculpture shown for the first time: typically powerful, with a sense of driving muscle and no fleshiness', saying 'I am very pleased that [Vogue] want to do it full-page.' Kar photographed Moore with two casts of Family Group (1949), an earlier version of which was his first large-scale commission for a bronze.

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Events of 1954back to top

Current affairs

Roger Bannister runs the four-minute mile. Bannister was the first man to achieve the 'miracle mile', a feat that was thought by some to be impossible, beating his rival, the Australian John Landy, to the record. Bannister went on to a career as a distinguished neurologist.
Food rationing ends in Britain.

Art and science

J.R.R. Tolkien publishes the first two parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Tolkien was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature and drew on his scholarly interests in history, language and mythology to create the fictional land of Middle Earth where the books are set.
Williams Golding publishes, Lord of the Flies.

International

The South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) is established in Bangkok. This international defence organisation was established as part of the 'containment' policy of limiting the influence of communism. SEATO was, however, found to be ineffective as the member organisations failed to agree on combined action; it was disbanded in 1977.

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