The Sculpture That Set Henry Moore's Auction Record, Again

Henry Moore's Reclining Figure: Festival (1951) sold for $33.1m at Christie's in London on June 30, 2016. Commissioned in 1949 and cast in an edition of five plus one artist's proof. This bronze cast had been traded twice before.

The sale beat Moore’s previous auction record by $2.76m, a 9% rise.

His previous auction record was set by another cast of the same work, which sold for $30.34m at Christie's on February 7, 2012. The sculpture had broken the artist's auction record in 1986, too.

Henry Moore was among the artists commissioned to create a major work for the 1951 Festival of Britain on London's new South Bank. It was Moore's first large reclining figure to be cast in bronze.

From the start of his career in the 1930s, Moore kept a close eye on his media coverage, cataloguing his news cuttings. He also documented his own work carefully using photography. In 1951, he went one step further, working with the film-maker John Read to record the progress of Reclining Figure: Festival for the BBC.

The work, which had a a prominent position at the 1951 exhibition in front of the Country pavilion, upset traditionalists. After the Festival it was attacked when on temporary loan to a museum in Leeds, the city in the North of England where Moore began his training as a sculpture.

A Brief History of Henry Moore at Auction