A sculpture by English artist Henry Moore that’s never hit the auction block before is headlining Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 5. Titled King and Queen (1952-53), the 64-inch-tall bronze has a £15 million ($20.5 million) high estimate.
Katherine Arnold, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th/21st century art and head of post-war and contemporary art for Europe, told ARTnews that the bronze is “the most exciting sculpture I’ve ever seen brought to market.”
She added that the work was acquired directly from the artist by the anonymous current owner: “It is the first cast in an edition of four plus an artist’s cast, and it is the only remaining example in private hands.”
All the other casts of King and Queen are now in major public museums including the MOA Museum of Art in Atami, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Two additional casts were later made especially for the Tate (in 1957) and for the Henry Moore Foundation (in 1985).
“Moore worked directly in wax and plaster rather than through extensive preparatory drawings, which gives the sculpture a wonderful immediacy,” Arnold said. “He was deeply inspired by the British Museum, particularly an ancient Egyptian regal double portrait. There’s something totemic about these figures—they feel like benevolent powers operating on a higher plane. The suggestion of the Queen’s crown is almost abstract, just a mark—yet you’re completely convinced of its regal presence. It’s that tension between abstraction and figuration that makes the sculpture so special.”
Moore’s auction record was set by his 1951 bronze Reclining Figure: Festival, which sold for £26.1 million ($31 million) at Sotheby’s New York in November 2022. The sculpture, originally commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain, has broken records more than once. It previously achieved £24.7 million ($33.1 million) at Christie’s in 2016.
