In Henry Moore’s (1898 – 1986) long career, certain motifs reappear. One is the seated figure, singly, in pairs or as a family group; the other is the reclining figure. Before Moore became widely recognised as the pre-eminent British sculptor of his generation, he was already identified by Punch magazine as a figure of fun. The sculptures which caused such mirth were his reclining figurers from the late thirties and early forties, when Moore had his breakthrough. By hollowing out the figure, he gave it an ethereal lightness which belied the weight of bronze and stone. It was these ‘holes’ which fixated Moore’s detractors in their ornery miscomprehension of ‘modern art’.

This Recto-Verso coloured ink, pen and ballpoint drawing from 1966 shows the draughtsman Moore at his best. Sculptors usually sketch out their vision for the final three-dimensional artwork they envisage, but not all sculptors show the same talent in their two-dimensional renditions. Henry Moore is exceptional and this became evident in his moving wartime drawings of sleeping Londoners on the platforms of the Underground during bombing raids.

In the present example, Moore uses pen and ink to indicate the matrix of curves which define the volume of the reclining figure, combined with touches of colour to give surface and shape as he envisions his finished result. The recto-verso angle is intriguing because one image appears to be the doppelganger of the other, but with variations. Could the artist have tried to render one side, then decided on a different approach with the other? One is reminded of the single image impression created by a monoprint and, in the case of Recto-Verso, a variation of the monoprint, the ghost print.