Henry Moore Textiles
The Sheep Field Barn, Hoglands, Perry Green, Hertfordshire, until 18 October
Hoglands, the former home of Henry Moore (1898–1986) near Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, was looking radiant on the late-summer day I visited it. The Foundation that Moore set up to care for his estate and reputation acquired the house from his family in 2004 and began restoring it. It gleams today probably more than it ever did when lived in, but a marvellous array of furniture and fittings, art and artefacts (including the original bottles of drink offered by HM to his visitors) ensures that the place still seems more of a home and less of a museum. The ground floor is open to the public and may be viewed under careful supervision.
The building is a late-medieval hall house that was divided into two cottages in the 19th century. The Moores started by renting half of it in 1940, bought the entirety the following year and turned it back into a single dwelling. Moore had no agent or dealer as such, so prospective clients came to him, and, as he became increasingly celebrated, he needed more space in which to entertain guests. In 1960 he built on a large sitting room for this purpose, and it remains the main room of the house, with a welcoming, friendly atmosphere. Here the visitor may gauge the extent of Moore’s own collecting interests from the pictures on the walls — which include Courbet, Vuillard and Renoir — and the multitude of objects on every surface and displayed on shelves. His own sculptures mingle with Cycladic or Pre-Columbian figures: everywhere there is something to surprise or gratify the eye.
I’m always curious to know what pictures artists choose to live with. Courbet makes a lot of sense for Moore, but I was surprised by his liking for Sickert (portraits and landscapes) and unprepared entirely for a large aquamarine moonlit landscape by the Belgian expressionist, Constant Permeke. Out in the beautifully kept grounds, the visitor can wander the lawns and encounter every so often a bronze sculpture strategically positioned to best advantage. There are also several studios to visit, the most famous of which is perhaps the Bourne Maquette Studio, where Moore worked on the tiny plaster models which were his way of thinking in three dimensions. Here are some of his collection of flints and bones which were the source of so much of his inspiration.
In the Sheep Field Barn Gallery is the exhibition of Moore’s textile designs, together with samples of printed fabric, which have already beguiled so many visitors and are once more on display by popular demand. Moore was very keen that art should play an active role in daily life, and fabric patterns could achieve this. He once admitted that colour was ‘a bit of a holiday’ for an artist largely concerned with masses of stone and metal, and in these designs he is often in festive mood. Like so many other artists when asked to design textiles, Moore was released from the straitjacket of a subject and turned with a kind of relief to abstraction. The spontaneous enjoyment of colour, line and pattern are evident in these lively designs, and they convey effortlessly to us some of their creator’s delight.
The visitor is greeted by a design called ‘Fruit and Flowers’ from 1943, which is juxtaposed with a sample of printed cotton made three years later. Less abstract than some, the drawing is nevertheless pleasingly formalised in green and pink on a dark grey background, executed mostly in wax crayon and watercolour. The printed cotton is much less subtle: the green and pink have become more vivid, and are silhouetted in white on a black background. The exhibition is full of lovely drawings in mixed media, some bringing in Moore’s trademark reclining figures, others animated by entirely abstract rhythms. There are cabinets of printed silks and other samples which help to cheer up the rather grey and slightly industrial barn setting, with exquisite small sculptures placed here and there. A rayon jacket borrowed from the V&A is made of fabric printed with one of Moore’s ‘barbed wire’ motifs, and elsewhere lengths of this design hang in different colours. A pattern called ‘Caterpillar and Insect Wings’ is really quite sinister — it has all the vigour and economy of a graffitied image.
A separate display in the Aisled Barn, an impressive 16th-century structure Moore rescued on the point of demolition and rebuilt on his land, features the earliest set of tapestries he designed to be woven at West Dean College in Sussex. These date from the 1970s and are very free in expression. One of the finest is ‘Three Women in a Landscape’, an arrangement of minimal figuration in lyrical blues, greys and fawns. Another is ‘Circus Rider’ of 1979. Eight in all, they comprise a really delightful sequence of works.
The visitor season at Perry Green ends on 18 October, and the Foundation will not re-open to the public until 1 April next year. But the textile exhibition will travel to Pallant House in Chichester (14 November 2009 to 21 February 2010), and has been such a success that it will probably continue to tour for months to come. Two handsome hardback picture books, both published by Lund Humphries, serve as excellent mementoes, or perhaps even as a substitute for those unable to visit the Foundation or see the exhibition. Hoglands (£35) is a treasury of documentary photos, tracing the life of the house through the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s and its recent renovation. It contains much fascinating detail about the way the Moores lived, and is evidence of how much they loved their home. Apart from the steady stream of artists and buyers, among the famous guests were W.H. Auden (with whom Moore collaborated on a book), Billy Wilder, Lauren Bacall and Somerset Maugham. Henry Moore Textiles (£30) is a lavish survey of all his known fabric patterns. It’s a beautiful production and a really welcome addition to any library, even to one already rich in Henry Moore publications.
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