Reclining Figure: Festival Reclining Figure: Festival Reclining Figure: Festival (LH 293) is a bronze sculpture by English artist Henry Moore, commissioned by the Arts Council in 1949 for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The sculpture can be viewed as an abstraction of a reclining female human figure, resting on two arms, with a small head. By 1949, Moore was already recognised as Britain's greatest living sculptor, having won the prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1948. The Arts Council suggested that a family group would be appropriate for its commission, based on the festival theme of "discovery", but Moore decided
Jerome Connor Connor produced scores of designs ranging from small portrait heads to relief panels to large civic commissions realized in bronze. Connor was a self-taught artist who was highly regarded in the United States where most of his public works can be seen. It was felt he was heavily influenced by the work of Irish American sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens. He used the human figure to give expression to emotions, values and ideals. Many of the commissions he received were for civic memorials and secular figures which he cast in bronze, a pronounced departure from the Irish tradition of stone carved,