Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Discover the story of Henry Moore's creation of King & Queen - which all started with a ball of wax.
In a BBC documentary filmed in 1960, the sculptor Henry Moore is shown at work in his studio at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, England. With his tweed jacket and comb-over hair, he looks like a conventional man of his time. Only his hands give him away — as animated as the ‘driven tools of creative obsession’ ascribed to Michelangelo in Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy.
King & Queen a strange and hypnotic work, the distorted heads evoking symbols of ancient royalty — the beak, the bird, the crown. (The angular, biomorphic head of the king emerged spontaneously as Moore was moulding a piece of wax.) In contrast, the hands and feet are rendered with striking realism: when Moore came to model them, he said he sought ‘to bring out the contrast between human grace and the concept of power in primitive kingship’.
For all their majesty, there is a vulnerability to the pair. Moore sets their faces towards an unknowable future, and in doing so aligns their fate with our own.
Henry Moore, O.M., C.H. (1898-1986), King and Queen, conceived and cast in 1952-53 in an edition of four plus one artist’s cast. Bronze with a dark green and brown patina. Height: 64½ in (164 cm). Two subsequent bronzes cast specifically for the collections of the Tate Gallery, London (1957) and the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham (1985).
Estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000.
Offered in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 5 March 2026 at Christie’s in London
Find out more: christies.com/en/stories/henry-moore-majestic-bronze-sculpture-king-and-queen
Discover the story of Henry Moore's creation of King & Queen - which all started with a ball of wax.
In a BBC documentary filmed in 1960, the sculptor Henry Moore is shown at work in his studio at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, England. With his tweed jacket and comb-over hair, he looks like a conventional man of his time. Only his hands give him away — as animated as the ‘driven tools of creative obsession’ ascribed to Michelangelo in Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy.
King & Queen a strange and hypnotic work, the distorted heads evoking symbols of ancient royalty — the beak, the bird, the crown. (The angular, biomorphic head of the king emerged spontaneously as Moore was moulding a piece of wax.) In contrast, the hands and feet are rendered with striking realism: when Moore came to model them, he said he sought ‘to bring out the contrast between human grace and the concept of power in primitive kingship’.
For all their majesty, there is a vulnerability to the pair. Moore sets their faces towards an unknowable future, and in doing so aligns their fate with our own.
Henry Moore, O.M., C.H. (1898-1986), King and Queen, conceived and cast in 1952-53 in an edition of four plus one artist’s cast. Bronze with a dark green and brown patina. Height: 64½ in (164 cm). Two subsequent bronzes cast specifically for the collections of the Tate Gallery, London (1957) and the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham (1985).
Estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000.
Offered in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 5 March 2026 at Christie’s in London
Find out more: christies.com/en/stories/henry-moore-majestic-bronze-sculpture-king-and-queen
