Henry Moore gets plaque
Thursday April 9, 2011
A plaque has been unveiled outside the Hammersmith studio where the British artist and sculptor Henry Moore began his legendary career.
Pictured: Henry Moore at work in his Adie Road studio.
His daughter and two grandchildren were among a group of guests who gathered outside the studio in Adie Road for the small ceremony on Wednesday, March 25.
Moore, who died in 1986 at the age of 88, is famous for his distinctive abstract sculptures, which can be found in public places across London. As the plaque was unveiled, his daughter Mary Moore said the work her father produced at the studio, including Mother and Child and Woman with Upraised Arms, exemplified his ‘passion’ for using English stone.
She also revealed that members of the family still live in the area, and that her eldest son and his wife recently bought a house nearby. The event was part of a continuing project by the Hammersmith and Fulham Historic
Buildings Group. Angela Dixon, chairman of the HBG, said the group was ‘delighted’ to be able to help commemorate Moore’s time in Hammersmith.
Moore lived and worked at 3 Grove Studios, in Adie Road, between 1924 and 1928. He moved to the area after completing his training at Leeds School of Art and initially lived with the painter Raymond Coxon, a close friend. During his time in Hammersmith, he taught at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington and attended Leon Underwood’s Brook Green School of Art in nearby Girdlers Road.
Moore married fellow student Irina Radetsky in 1929 and Mary, their only child, was born in 1946. He became a household name in the 1950s and continued to produce works of art well into his eighties.
The only Moore sculpture in the borough is a half-size working model of his celebrated 1960s statue Reclining Figure, which stands beside the entrance to Charing Cross Hospital.
Henry Gentle, the current occupier of Grove Studios, now called the Laboratory, said: “It is a daily pleasure to be working in a studio with such a great history.”
The first local historical plaque was unveiled last November and adorns St Vincent’s care home in Queen Caroline Street, W6.
