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Moore, Henry  (1898 – 1986)

‘I do not wish to commit myself to extra things outside my sculpture and drawing’

A fine one-page autograph letter signed by Henry Moore, 31st March 1940.

The sculptor writes to a Miss Ramsden, opening, ‘Since receiving your second letter about the Morley College lecture I have thought over my decision again but find that what I said in my last letter is what I still think. The subject is so wide, and would need a better and more extensive knowledge of its history and literature than I have got. If I said yes, then to do the lecture with proper thoroughness and fairness I should need to spend a good deal of time in preparing it, especially being unused to speaking in public.’ArrayHe goes on, ‘Also, the part-time teaching which I have always had to do as part of my means of livelihood, begins again in a few days’ time (It was temporarily suspended at the outbreak of war.) This teaching takes two days each week in term times, out of the time for my own work, and so I do not wish to commit myself to extra things outside my sculpture and drawing.’

Moore closes, ‘If I were used to lecturing and could do it easily and without worry, I should have been glad to have taken part in the series.’ Letters folds, otherwise in very fine condition. Rare and desirable in this format. It was in 1940 and 1941 that Moore completed his highly-acclaimed drawings of bomb-shelters in London.