{"id":539995,"date":"2026-03-23T07:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/539995\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T07:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T07:00:07","slug":"flock-and-awe-inside-the-big-changes-at-henry-moores-glorious-sheep-filled-hoglands-home-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/539995\/","title":{"rendered":"Flock and awe: inside the big changes at Henry Moore\u2019s glorious sheep-filled Hoglands home | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September 1940, Henry Moore<\/a> and his wife, Irina, left London to escape wartime bombing, ending up in the bucolic hamlet of Perry Green, where Hertfordshire meets Essex. What was envisaged as a temporary refuge eventually became permanent, and the array of buildings in which Moore lived and worked is now a kind of cultural ecosystem dedicated to his genius. Part minor stately home, part sculpture park and part archive \u2013 one of the largest devoted to a single artist \u2013 it\u2019s now overseen by his eponymous foundation, established in 1977.<\/p>\n

Today, it comprises a constellation of studios and workspaces dispersed across an Arcadian landscape. Sheep graze in far fields and colossal sculptures loom on the horizon. Moore\u2019s house, Hoglands, is preserved just as he left it, replete with his collections of books and artefacts \u2013 Dogon and Ashanti carvings, a narwhal tusk casually slung in a corner, a Picasso print in the kitchen \u2013 along with amply provisioned drinks trays for entertaining visitors and prospective buyers. Over the years, Moore clinked glasses with a stream of admirers, from Lauren Bacall to German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who had a large Moore situated outside his Bonn chancellery in the 1970s, remarking that it synthesised \u201cnature with intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n

double quotation markHe would draw sheep in the surrounding field, tapping his studio window to attract them<\/p>\n

Before ascending to this rural apotheosis, Moore\u2019s life was shaped by childhood poverty \u2013 the son of a Yorkshire coalminer, he was the seventh of eight children \u2013 and formative experiences in both world wars. Injured in a gas attack during the 1917 Battle of Cambrai, he was the youngest man in his regiment, volunteering at 18. The horror ultimately inculcated a deep and lasting sense of despair at the human capacity for conflict. \u201cThe sight of a khaki uniform,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbegan to mean everything in life that was wrong and wasteful and anti-life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shadowland \u2026 one of Moore\u2019s shelter drawings. Photograph: Henry Moore Foundation<\/p>\n

The second world war displaced him to Perry Green, but it also saw him working as a war artist, descending nightly like a modern Dante into the London underground to make powerful, poignant drawings of people sheltering from the blitz, encapsulating moments of collective vulnerability and stoicism. \u201cHe was so sensitive, he didn\u2019t want to take photographs or sketch people,\u201d says Lesley Wake of the Henry Moore Foundation. \u201cHe literally took notes and drew from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Shelter Drawings, which established his reputation, are central to understanding Moore\u2019s response to conflict \u2013 and pivotal to his development as an artist. \u201cHe created people,\u201d says Wake, \u201cbut he was drawing sculptures. And all this came out of seeing people sheltering in the shadows.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a sense of things coming full circle, the Shelter Drawings, among the first works Moore made after arriving in Perry Green, are the subject of a new exhibition in the estate\u2019s Sheep Field Barn, marking its reopening after a major remodelling by London-based architects DSDHA. \u201cAn important aspect of the brief,\u201d says DSDHA director David Hills, \u201cwas this dichotomy of wanting it to feel like it did when Moore was here, but also recognising that today\u2019s visitors have different expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooding and monolithic \u2026 the redeveloped Sheep Field Barn. Photograph: \u00a9Henry Moore Foundation\/Rob Hill<\/p>\n

For such an ordinary, everyday building, the Sheep Field Barn has a surprisingly complex provenance. Originally a steel-frame structure covered in asbestos panels, it was erected in the 1970s and used by Moore to store work materials and sheep fodder. In 1999, it was converted into a gallery space by Hawkins\/Brown Architects, its stark geometric volume wrapped in a skin of timber, typical of local farm buildings. As the largest structure on the estate, its scale \u2013 combined with the matt black painted cladding \u2013 gave it a somewhat brooding, monolithic presence.<\/p>\n

Its latest reimagining sees new parts added to its north and east sides enclosed by a sloping roof that becomes, in effect, the building\u2019s fifth elevation. Paradoxically, the effect of extending the roof contrives to diminish the building\u2019s scale, despite its enlarged footprint, easing it into the landscape and making it look less monolithic. A new external carapace of silver spruce timber, reclaimed from the original building, is also softer on the eye. Overall, the remodelling exudes a sense of rigour and precision: with limited scope for architectural moves, each one had to be scrupulously considered.<\/p>\n

Part of the renovated gallery will be given over to a permanent display exploring the arc of Moore\u2019s life and work. A changing exhibition programme, inaugurated by the Shelter Drawings, will run alongside, focusing more intently on specific aspects of his oeuvre. The expanded building also incorporates new spaces for art education, a passion of Moore\u2019. His assorted studios, like his house, are as he left them, tools and work still in place, as if the great man had just stepped out for a cup of tea.<\/p>\n

A riotous cornucopia \u2026 Moore in his maquette studio. Photograph: John Hedgecoe\/Henry Moore Foundation Archive<\/p>\n

Different studios were used for different activities, from creating maquettes, to carving, drawing and printmaking. Improvisation was a common theme. A greenhouse-like structure was employed for preparing huge plastercasts and the drawing studio was a compact summer house originally set on a turntable so it could be rotated to follow the sun. Moore\u2019s maquette studio, unassuming from the outside, is a riotous cornucopia inside, an eye-popping cabinet of curiosities crammed with models and scavenged bits and pieces: stones, wood, feathers, bones and a cyclopean elephant skull.<\/p>\n

In this spirit, DSDHA\u2019s design strategy is disarmingly and admirably simple. The initial generative model, which would sit happily in Moore\u2019s maquette studio, shows the dark bulk of the original building with the new parts neatly sheathed over it, a deft yet elegant transformation. The idea of containing one volume within the other parallels Moore\u2019s propensity to put one form inside another, as illustrated by Large Upright Internal\/External Form, a monumental bronze from the early 1980s that now sits near the building\u2019s entrance. Its pod-like, uterine contours counterpoint the straight lines of the architecture.<\/p>\n

The enlarged volume contains two new workshops for making, experimenting, talks and other activities, along with ancillary spaces. The foundation hosts visits by more than 2,000 schoolchildren each year, delivered free, and these improved facilities will uplift its educational offer, perhaps even incubating the next Moore or Sarah Lucas. Moore claimed that he decided to become a sculptor when he was 11 after learning about Michelangelo\u2019s achievements at Sunday school.<\/p>\n

In an era in which art and design are increasingly relegated to the margins, it\u2019s a fine attempt at practical redress. Over time, the workshops will be animated by a cacophony of made work. \u201cChildren go out, they find stuff, bring it back in, and we go, \u2018What does that look like to you?\u2019\u201d says Wake. \u201cWhat can you make it into? They use that to inspire work. So they\u2019re doing exactly what Moore did, on the same site.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commanding \u2026 a colossal sculpture towers over the sheep field. Photograph: Henry Moore Foundation<\/p>\n

In good weather, people and activities can spill out into the adjoining field, protected by the overhanging roof. Standard zinc sheep troughs provide water for cleaning mucky hands, but there was some bemusement from the plumber who installed them at the choice of something so patently agricultural.<\/p>\n

Yet this was entirely the point. Although Moore became immensely wealthy, with his sculptures commanding huge sums, he lived modestly, embracing a mindset of \u201cfrugal innovation\u201d. Wake says: \u201cHe was a recycler before the phrase was even coined. But he did it from the point of view of waste not, want not. He used everything he had.\u201d The no-frills refashioning of a shed into a slightly larger shed chimes exactly with his artistic and philosophic ethos.<\/p>\n

Doubtless he would approve of the project\u2019s aim of being a paradigm of re-use and sustainability. Sheep\u2019s wool insulation, triple-glazed windows and an airtight envelope enhance energy efficiency, while integrated solar panels on the big roof generate power, supported by ground source heat pumps. The retrofit may be twice the size of the original building but will consume half as much energy.<\/p>\n

There is a delicious irony in the insulation being made of sheep\u2019s wool, as Moore would regularly draw sheep in the surrounding fields, tapping on the window of his studio to attract them. These ovine congregations formed the basis of Sheep Piece, one of his most famous bronze sculptures. When Moore placed a cast in the fields of Perry Green, sheep would shelter under it and use it as a scratching post. But whether by animals or humans, Moore always thought that sculptures should be touched and their forms and textures savoured.<\/p>\n

With the renovation of the Sheep Field Barn and a major new show opening in May at Kew Gardens in London, Moore is having a moment. It\u2019s hard to believe that he was born in 1898 \u2013 but his practice represented a radical rupture with the romanticism of the Victorian era, a rupture that was not always well received. His sculptures were decapitated in Dumfries and daubed with blue paint in Leeds, while his Recumbent Figure was vandalised during a wartime loan to New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art<\/a>. Nonetheless, as the decades passed, he became a national treasure, and was always clear about where he stood. \u201cArt is the expression of the imagination,\u201d he once declared, \u201cnot the reproduction of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Shelter Drawings 1940-1941<\/a>, Henry Moore Studios and Gardens, Perry Green, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, from 1 April; Henry Moore: Monumental Nature<\/a>, Kew Gardens, London, from 9 May \u2013 31 January 2027<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In September 1940, Henry Moore and his wife, Irina, left London to escape wartime bombing, ending up in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-539995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}