Fortuitously gifted
Lost treasure... John Vincent reports on an unknown Henry Moore sculpture discovered on a farmhouse mantelpiece.
Hardy farmer John Hastings was an outdoors man, more interested in tending to his animals than in fine art, and he paid little heed to the seveninch high “trinket” his father had given him several decades ago. After being moved around over the years, it finally found a resting place on the sitting room mantelpiece of the sparse and eccentrically decorated Wiltshire farmhouse where nobody bothered to lock the doors.
Now, following Mr Hastings’ death aged 91 in 2019, the little-regarded ornament has been authenticated as a previously unrecorded sculpture by Henry Moore and is to surface at Berkshire auctioneers Dreweatts on March 16. It has been afforded a modest pre-sale estimate of £30,000-£50,000 but could well fetch much more.
The story of the lost treasure began when the great Yorkshire sculptor created Mother and Child in lead in 193940 and a few years later gave – or perhaps sold it – to fervent supporter and friend, architectural publisher and editor
Hubert de Cronin Hastings (1902-86), who presented it to his farmer son some time in the early 70s.
The unique sculpture, in trademark semi-abstract style, is particularly rare because Moore cast in lead for only a short time while experimenting with different materials and incorporating elements in string and wire for a series of stringed sculptures. Unusual markings on the front of the piece could mean it was originally intended to be stringed and the Henry Moore Foundation was able to link it to a 1939 sketch, Eighteen Ideas for Sculpture.
Awaiting the verdict of the foundation was a “nailing-biting experience” for Dreweatts specialist Francesca Whitham. “The sculpture has always been called ‘The
Moore’ within the
family and they are naturally elated, especially as it had always been believed that the sculpture was gifted by Moore to Hubert de Cronin Hastings and remained within the family. It’s an exciting new discovery which provides a rare opportunity to own a unique sculpture by Henry Moore. “
Hastings Snr, a great promoter of Modernism and usually referred to H de C, was chairman of the Architectural Press
and editor, from 1927, of Architectural Review
and Architects’ Journal,
through which he met and became firm friends with Moore. Among writers employed on the magazine were Osbert Lancaster, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman. Hastings also wrote books under the pseudonym Ivor de Wolfe, one of which bore the unusual title Civilia: The End of Sub Urban Man, published in 1971. Moore, born in Roundhill Road, Castleford, in 1898, became one of Britain’s most important artists of the 20th century and in 2016 his groundbreaking 1951 modernist sculpture Reclining Figure: Festival
fetched a recordbreaking £24.7m at Christie’s.