Double Standing Figure

Date1950

Artist Henry Moore (English, 1898-1986)

CultureEnglish

MediumBronze

EditionOne of two casts

DimensionsOverall: 87 × 42 1/8 × 17 1/8 in. (221 × 107 × 43.5 cm)
Base: 3 9/16 × 42 1/8 × 16 15/16 in. (9 × 107 × 43 cm)

Credit LineGift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.

Period20th c

Classification(s)

Sculpture

SignedNot signed and dated

BibliographyMundy, James, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center: Vassar College The History and Collection (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007), p. 129, p. 128 repr. Hall, Emily, Oasis in the City: The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art, (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), pp.28-29, repr.ProvenanceCollection of the Artist
Curt Valentin Gallery, New York, NY (by 1952?)
Purchased by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., 1954
Gifted to Vassar College Art Gallery, 1955

Vassar Exhibitions

Room for Moore: Works from the Permanent Collection

Exhibition HistoryNew York, Museum of Modern Art, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculputure Garden, 1953
DescriptionThis large bronze by one of the twentieth century’s leading sculptors holds an important position in Henry Moore’s career. It presents two casts of a single figure of a distinctive combination of biomorphic and geometrical components (what Moore himself called “skeletonic”), one figure turned at approximately 90 degrees from the other. The single Standing Figure was exhibited at an important outdoor installation of Calder’s work at Battersea and was positioned before a lake. Moore relates that when it returned from the exhibition, a second cast had already arrived in his studio: “... having them both at the studio I was able to try out a double figure arrangement. For some little time before working on this figure, I was thinking of making four separate figures standing in a row on the same base ... But one never finds the time to carry out all one’s plans, and when the two casts of this single figure were together I saw a chance to carry out at least part of the first unrealized conception.” Moore continues, “doubling up of the two fig- ures increased the complexity of the formal relations and intensified the kind of rhythm that the single one had. The two figures can’t help having a certain unity since they are in fact the same figure, but in placing them together I made sure that each figure presented a different view from the other whichever way one looked at them.” Only two casts were made of the Double Standing Figure. The donor of the work, Edgar Kauffman, Jr., was the son of the Pittsburgh department store magnet of the same name, who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design the family’s country house, Fallingwater.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu