Henry Moore – Illustration to ‘The Rescue’

Of Henry Moore’s work depicting the Second World War, his scenes of Londoner’s sheltering in Underground stations are probably the best known, but there is another series, one which has a more subtle nod to the war effort.

In 1944 he was commissioned to produce six illustrations for the published version of The Rescue, a radio play by Edward Sackville-West based on the Greek poet Homer’s Odyssey. It was the first time Moore had illustrated a text.

Over two evenings from Thursday 25th November 1943 the BBC broadcast The Rescue. The story of Odysseus’ ten year battle to return home after the Trojan War is one of oldest poems in Western literature but Sackville-West deliberately reinterpreted it to resonate with current events. At the time of its broadcast, Greece had suffered over two years of occupation by German and Italian forces. The economy had been crippled and thousands had died in a country wide famine.

Henry Moore (1898-1986) Penelope and her Suitors, The Odyssey, 1944

Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation

The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Bedford Collection

The Rescue focussed on the last part of the Odyssey. Odysseus, the King of the Greek island of Ithaca has failed to return from The Trojan Wars. His wife Penelope waits for his return but her palace is plagued by suitors, who believing her to be a widow, vie for her hand in marriage. Whilst Penelope thinks of various ways to keep them at bay, they overrun her palace, slaughter her livestock, drink her wine and plot to murder her son. Odysseus, after ten years, finally returns and with the help of his son, Telemachus, kills them all.

Henry Moore (1898-1986) Death of the Suitors, The Odyssey, 1944
Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation

The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Bedford Collection

Sackville-West‘s parallels with the situation in Europe and the palace in Ithaca were clear. As was his call to arms to those listening to help liberate the lands threatened by the Nazi ‘suitors’.

Moore doesn’t shy away from the gruesomeness of the story. In his Death of the Suitors the walls and floors are covered in red as the suitors lay in various stages of dying. The solid rounded figures show the same influence as his sculpture which he had been prevented from making due to the war. In 1940 his Hampstead studio had suffered bomb damage and he and his wife moved to Perry Green in Hertfordshire, where Moore concentrated on drawing. He still journeyed to London where he found comparisons with his own sculptures and people sleeping under blankets sheltering in the underground. The same dark palette that he used for the shelter scenes is used in the illustrations for The Rescue but instead of wax crayon as a highlight he used chalk, again enhancing the sculptural form of his figures.

Henry Moore (1898-1986) Shelter Scene – Bunks and Sleepers, 1941
© Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Bedford

The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery collection at The Higgins Bedford contains eight drawings by Henry Moore dating from 1935 to 1979. We are also lucky enough to have one of his sculptures, ‘Helmet Head No.1’, from 1950 which you can see HERE on Art UK.

Written by Victoria Partridge, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art