Henry Moore.
During the 1950s he devised many compositions of seated figures, usually in
pairs or groups, which allude to the renewal of life in postwar Britain. The
couple depicted in “King and Queen,” however, has greater public significance.
The subject emerged as Moore worked on figures inspired by an Egyptian Seated Royal
Couple from the eighteenth century B.C., a sculpture displayed in the British
Museum. The serenity and stateliness of Moore’s figures, completed in the same
year as the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, may also reaffirm Britain’s
monarchy as a symbol of continuity and triumph after the country’s near
destruction by war.