"Last in Private Hands" - Henry Moore's Monumental King & Queen | Christie's

Why It Matters

As the only privately held version of an iconic Moore masterpiece, the sculpture commands premium collector interest and illustrates the market power of rarity combined with artistic legacy.

Key Takeaways

• Moore sculpted King & Queen from wax in early 1950s.
• Figures inspired by Egyptian monuments and personal family models.
• Bronze textures created using unconventional tools like toothbrushes.
• Only private‑hand version remains, making it uniquely collectible.
• Installation in open landscape enhances monumental, timeless presence.

Summary

The video, produced by Christie’s, spotlights Henry Moore’s monumental “King & Queen” sculpture—its 1950s genesis, artistic lineage, and status as the sole example still held in private ownership.

Moore began with a modest wax model, shaping a horned head, crown, and regal forms while drawing on ancient Egyptian stillness and a bedtime story he read to his six‑year‑old daughter, Mary. He scaled the piece in plaster, employing files, graters and even toothbrushes to imprint textures that would later catch light in bronze. Family members, including his wife Arena and daughter Mary, served as live models for the hands and feet, infusing human intimacy into the otherwise monumental figures.

A striking anecdote describes Moore placing the bronze pair in a windswept Mand landscape, where the sculptures seemed to become timeless guardians of the horizon. The narration emphasizes that this is the only version remaining in private hands, underscoring its rarity and iconic status within Moore’s oeuvre.

For collectors and institutions, the work’s uniqueness amplifies its market allure, while its synthesis of ancient inspiration and personal narrative reinforces Moore’s lasting influence on 20th‑century sculpture. The piece exemplifies how provenance, rarity, and artistic merit converge to shape high‑value art transactions.

Original Description

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: https://www.christies.com/en/stories/henry-moore-majestic-bronze-sculpture-king-and-queen