Henry Moore's Sheep Sketchbook (Thames & Hudson 60th Anniversary Edition)

Thames & Hudson is celebrating it’s 60th Anniversary! To mark this special birthday we will be reissuing 20 titles from across our list as special editions. Popular when first published, popular now, with the added spice that enhanced by their unique 60th Anniversary cover and jacket designs they are set to become collectors items.

Henry Moore’s perennially popular collection of sheep sketches - in February 1972 Henry Moore’s sculpture studios in the English countryside at Much Hadham were filled with the preparations for his retrospective exhibition in Florence. In search of peace and quiet, he went into a smaller room overlooking the fields where a local farmer graxed his sheep. Initially he saw the sheep as nothing more than four-legged balls of wool, but his vision changed as he explored what were really like – the way they moved, the shape of their bodies under the fleece.

They also developed strong human and biblical associations, and the sight of a ewe with her lamd evoked the mother-and-child theme, important to Henre Moore in much of his work, Solid in form, sudden and vigorous in movement, Henry Moore’s sheep are created through a network of swirling and zigzagging lines in the rapid (and in Moore’s hands) sensitive medium of ballpoint pen.