[CPProt.net] RE: bronze statue worth $5.3m by sculptor Henry Moore has been stolen

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

RE: £3m Henry Moore sculpture stolen 
December 17, 2005

A bronze statue worth £3m ($5.3m) by sculptor Henry Moore has been stolen
from the grounds of a museum. 


This is not the first time a valuable piece of art is stolen within weeks
after the announcement of an auction record reached by the same artist..

Read;
November 29, 2005: 

Henry Moore Mother & Child Fetches European Auction Record At Bonhams

More information

A Seminal Work, The Visual Climax Of His Early Years
First purchased by V & A Director - Sir Eric MacLagan

In a jam-packed Bonhams saleroom in New Bond Street, the most important
sculpture by Henry Moore to appear at auction in recent years sold for
£1,069,600 (with premium) after intense bidding today. It sold in the room
to a private collector and smashed the European auction record for a unique
carving by Henry Moore. Mother and Child, 1931, described by Moore himself
as “one of my best earlier pieces” was purchased soon after Henry Moore’s
exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in the same year, for just £18–18
shillings. Also in the sale, a reclining figure by Henry Moore sold for over
double its estimate in the room at £308,000. Henry Moore’s Mother & Child,
1931 is the most expensive 20th century work of art to be sold in London
this year. The entire sale achieved just over 3 million.

Bonhams’ Head of Modern British Art, Matthew Bradbury said, “It is an
immense privilege to have sold this beautiful Mother & Child sculpture. The
enormous price reflects the quality of the work. It stands head and
shoulders above any other carving by Moore and has smashed a European record
for hand carved object by ¾ million.”

Mother & Child is beautifully carved in 1931 using the finest marble, verde
di prato. At just 8 ¾ inches in height, it is a work whose small size is in
inverse proportion to its extraordinary presence as a work of art. The piece
represents a visual climax in the early career of Moore. Moore won a
scholarship to Italy in 1925 and it is said that while in Florence, he spent
every morning at the Brancacci Chapel drawing inspiration from Masaccio’s
statuesque figures - an influence that can certainly be seen in the present
work.

Mother and Child, 1931 is a work of seminal importance and its provenance is
as distinguished as its artistic quality and rarity – formerly being in the
collection of V&A director, Sir Eric MacLagan K.C.V.O. Sir Eric was one of
the most distinguished figures in the international art world between the
first and second World Wars; a man who combined the roles of scholar,
curator and collector to a rare degree. He was also one of the first
collectors to buy the work of Henry Moore.

Sir Eric MacLagan extended well beyond the confines of his specialization in
the field of Early Christian and Renaissance studies. Breaking stereotypes,
he sported an intriguing and certainly pioneering side to his passions – a
love of Modern Art. As one of the first private collectors to buy the work
of Henry Moore, he meticulously documented the purchase in his household
personal accounts, neatly handwritten on a sheet of paper. The single entry
reads November ’31 H. Moore statuette 18.18.0.

Amusingly, the sculpture entry sits beside other purchase entries, including
a beige stair carpet, a sewing machine and a refrigerator. In such prosaic
surroundings, this is the first and only record of sale for this pre-eminent
work of 20th Century British Art. 

In 1946 Moore wrote to Sir Eric to encourage him to lend the statue to an
exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; “I do hope
you will be able to lend it. I know it will be away rather a long time, but
I always look upon it as one of my best earlier pieces, and it will help to
make the exhibition more complete than it would be without it.” Sir Eric
agreed.

Moore, in the same letter, reinforces his fondness of this sculpture; “Thank
you for agreeing to let me have it photographed as the Modern Museum of Art
wanted a photograph of it specially and I have always wanted a photograph of
it myself.”

Moore was a sculptor with few themes, but a multitude of resonance. The
motif of mother and child, along with the reclining figure, was one that
obsessed and intrigued Moore throughout his life. Intrigued by the organic
and natural, Moore was ultimately bewitched by the human figure, and his
sculptural quest into human form was both mystical and spiritual. He strove
to depict the inner essence of his subject and presence, or, as he put it,
‘vitality’.

“Sculpture, for me, must have life in it, vitality. It must have a feeling
for organic form, a certain pathos and warmth. A sculpture must have its own
life and form,” he said.

Here, he is demonstrably an artist in supreme control, able to deliver the
most intense and gratifying aesthetic experience, imbued with an
intellectual and spiritual depth that is unparalleled in other examples of
the same motif at that time. Mother and child, 1931 is a unique and
individual statement.

The sculpture was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and
Chicago, and San Francisco and the last time it was ever seen in public was
at The Arts Council of Great Britain of 1967.

For further information and/or images, please contact Michelle Gonsalves on
020 7468 8340 or press at bonhams.com.

Press website – www.bonhams.com/press

Bonhams, founded in 1793, is one of the world's oldest and largest
auctioneers of fine art and antiques. The present company was formed by the
merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son and Neale UK.
In August 2002, the company acquired Butterfields, the principal firm of
auctioneers on the West Coast of America and in August 2003, Goodmans, a
leading Australian fine art and antiques auctioneer with salerooms in
Sydney, joined the Bonhams Group of Companies. Today, Bonhams is the third
largest and fastest growing auction house in the world with a global network
of offices and regional representatives providing sales advice and valuation
services in 20 countries. It offers more sales than any of its rivals,
through two major salerooms in London: New Bond Street, and Knightsbridge,
and a further 10 throughout the UK. Sales are also held in San Francisco,
Los Angeles, New York and Boston in the USA; and Switzerland, Monaco, and
Australia. For a full listing of upcoming sales, plus details of more than
40 Bonhams specialist departments, go to www.bonhams.com . For other press
releases, go to www.bonhams.com/press.