‘Very powerful and yet very simple’: Henry Moore in the Sixties

Two new exhibitions explore how the 20th-century sculptor stayed true to his own vision, as much in his art as in his personal life, writes William Cook

Moore in the workshop with his daughter Mary (Felix H Man)

In the leafy grounds of Hoglands, an old farmhouse in rural Hertfordshire where Britain’s greatest sculptor, Henry Moore, lived and worked for nearly half a century, his only child, Mary Moore, is showing me some of her father’s greatest artworks. Mary grew up here, she played here as a child, and today these gardens are given over to his iconic sculptures.

“In a way, he saw the fields as open-air galleries,” says Mary. “The light changing, the weather changing, the time of day changing, from morning to night – all of those things change how a sculpture looks. It’s the most modern way, to my mind, of seeing sculpture in daylight, because you get a constant variation which changes your relationship to it.”

Moore loved to sculpt outdoors. “He worked outside, he liked to be outside,” says Mary. “He was utterly miserable if he couldn’t work.” Moore lived here from 1940 until his death in 1986, and his personality still looms large: in the little summerhouse where he used to sit and draw; in the airy studio where he made his maquettes; in the stables and the farmyard where he made his sculptures; in the homely farmhouse where he lived with his wife Irina, and their daughter Mary. Even after all these years, it feels as if he’s still around.