By 1951, Henry Moore was widely considered the world’s most significant sculptor, having exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1948, he played a key role in the festival of Britain in 1951 and was granted his first major retrospective at the Tate. The figures depicted in the present example, with ambiguous drapery jutting from their frames, share some resemblance with the anonymous, huddled and swaddled subjects of Moore’s shelter drawings 1941-2, documenting people in air-raid shelters and underground stations in London. Portrayed using similar techniques the Artist had developed before the war and had used in the shelter drawings by applying watercolour over layers of wax crayon, pen and pencil, this example reveals Moore’s experimental process and skill as a draftsman, studying the nature of forms to create new sculptural concepts. During the mid-1950s, there was a reduction in this sort of preparatory sketch for his sculptures, as Moore began to use maquettes more frequently.