Pl. III - from the Elephant Skull Album

Henry Moore

Henry Moore created a portfolio of thirty-two etchings he titled "Elephant Skull Album", done between 1969 and 1970. Biologist Sir Julian and Juliette Huxley gifted Moore an elephant skull he had found in Africa in the late 1960s. Moore was fascinated with the complexity of the forms and began a close study of its composition. Part of that study resulted in the series of etching, of which this is the third of the thirty-two.

Moore stated: "Nature's sense of strength and structure is one of the marvelous things that you discover in studying such bones," Moore told art critic Henry J. Seldis during the time he was working on the etchings in 1970. "I was delighted to be given an elephant's skull, and my excitement grew as I found more complexity and variety in it than there is even in a human skull — much more. This is what gradually fascinated me and led me to do the etchings."

He further noted "It was a real discovery for me to draw directly on the copper plates, first considering the entire skull, then to concentrate on different areas in it. Etchings I had done in the past were realizations of pictorial and sculptural ideas previously formulated through drawings. I now find that it is possible to get more delicate, sensitive and the inner lines using the etching needle on a copper plate than one can ever get with any pen on paper. Therefore, the gradations from light to dark, of depth and shadows and projections of form, can be more exactly stated. In some of the etchings I have used this fineness of line to express space and distance as well as mysterious depths of shadow which I could find in the elephant's skull.

Moore's works stand as a tribute to the strength and solidity of the elephant and at the same time provides a warning as to the temporal life of all earthly creatures, no matter how large or intelligent they might be.