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
Bronze and brass ornamental work were doubtless votive figures, others were images in domestic shrines, and some were certainly ornaments. Among the cult-idols are the dancing Lares, who carry cornucopias and libation-bowls. The little Heracles that Lysippus made for Alexander was a table-ornament ("epitrapezios"): he was reclining on the lion's skin, his club in one hand, a wine-cup in the other. With the invention of hollow casting bronze became the most important medium of monumental sculpture, largely because of its strength and lightness, which admitted poses that would not be possible in stone. But the value of the metal in later ages has involved the