Archive

Collection

The Henry Moore image archive provides a complete record of the artist’s life and work comprising at least 120,000 black and white photographs and negatives, together with over 22,000 colour transparencies and many thousands of digitised images.

- work in different media - sculpture, drawings, tapestries and textiles 
- images of Moore, his family and friends dating back to the 1890s
- the artist at work
- sculpture in progress including foundry processes
- photographs overdrawn by Moore
- exhibition installations
- works in situ
- Henry Moore Foundation events
- visitors to Perry Green over the years
- Perry Green estate since the 1940s
- contents of studios
- source material - e.g. works of other artists/trees/found objects
- animals

From at least the 1930s Moore used photography to document his work, sometimes recording every stage from conception to completion. The earliest photographs show him as a boy and his mother and father at Castleford, Yorks. Important early images of Moore the artist show him with his work at 3 Grove Studios, Hammersmith around 1927, and 11a Parkhill Road c.1930. The earliest of his own photographs date from when he was living in Kent in the early 1930s. The archive also keeps the original glass plates for many of his early works, as published by Lund Humphries in the first edition of Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings.

In addition to Moore’s own prints and transparencies, the archive holds material from many other accomplished photographers. In recent years the Foundation has acquired the Henry Moore photographic archives of Errol Jackson, John Hedgecoe and Frank Farnham. Work by a host of other photographers includes numerous images by David Finn, Gemma Levine, Felix H Man, Lee Miller, Michel Muller and Stephen Spender.

Location, facilities and visits

The image archive is housed in Dane Tree House on the Perry Green estate. Bona fide researchers and other visitors are welcome by appointment.

For further information please email

images@henry-moore.org.