Henry Moore: ‘He was utterly miserable if he couldn’t work’

In the leafy grounds of Hoglands, an old farmhouse in rural Hertfordshire where Britain’s greatest sculptor, Henry Moore, lived and worked for nearly half a century, his only child, Mary Moore, is showing me some of her father’s greatest artworks. “By then he’d more or less decided that the open air, the landscape, was the best place for his work.” Moore offered Murray financial support, as well as sculptures. “Castleford, Yorkshire, coalmining… his roots were extremely important.” In 1987, a year after Moore died, Murray mounted a memorial exhibition of Moore’s work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. As Murray says, “The deeper you dig, the more powerful his work becomes.“ open image in gallery Moore’s ‘Three piece reclining figures’ in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park I travelled to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to take another look at Moore’s sculptures, and to meet up with Godfrey Worsdale, the director of the Henry Moore Foundation. “There’s never any prevarication with Moore.” A short drive away, in Leeds, where Moore first studied sculpture, is the Henry Moore Institute, a unique sculpture gallery, library and study centre established by Henry Moore.