Press

An exhibition of Henry Moore’s much-loved sheep etchings as well as related sculpture and found objects will go on tour to regional venues surrounding the artist’s former home in Hertfordshire. It will begin at Saffron Walden Museum, Essex, from Saturday 12 September 2009.

The award-winning Saffron Walden Museum (run by Uttlesford District Council and the Saffron Walden Museum Society, www.saffronwaldenmuseum.org) is an appropriate first venue for Henry Moore Sheep, because the town’s wealth grew out of the medieval wool trade. In times past, sheep would graze beside the castle ruins, next to where the museum was built in 1835. The past relationship between the town, sheep and the saffron trade will also be explored in the exhibition using images and historic documents from the Museum’s own collections.

Henry Moore’s representations of sheep are among the most popular of his works, surprising and delighting those discovering them for the first time. He sketched the animals as they grazed in the fields surrounding his Hertfordshire studios, and they even inspired his monumental bronze sculpture Sheep Piece 1971-72 (LH 627), which can be seen by visiting the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, www.henry-moore.org/pg. Moore wrote: ‘Then I began to realize that underneath all that wool was a body, which moved in its own way, and that each sheep had its individual character.’ (1980)

The second venue, Hertford Museum, Hertfordshire, will reopen with this exhibition after a major refurbishment programme. www.hertfordmuseum.org. The exhibition, with additional sculpture and drawings, will then move on to the Gibberd Gallery, Harlow Civic Centre.