Magic in this Country: Hepworth, Moore and the Land

Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975) and Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) both grew up in Yorkshire and claimed the landscape as a formative artistic influence.

Specific landscapes continued to inspire them throughout their lives; Moore was so struck by a visit to Stonehenge in 1921 that he created a series of detailed lithographs of the stones some 50 years later, while Hepworth found herself inspired by the Cornish landscape she moved to in 1939, writing in 1952, ‘there must be magic in this country around here.’ Specific places appear in the titles of her work, for example her experiences of Mincarlo, a bay off the Isles of Scilly, are conjured in both strung, golden sculpture, and the painting ‘Stone Form (Mincarlo)’, bought together here for the first time alongside other sculptures and paintings relating to the land.

The exhibition brings together some of the earliest works in Wakefield’s Permanent Art Collection from artists such as John Atkinson Grimshaw and Phillip Reinagle with contemporary interventions from as recent as 2022 by Ro Robertson and Emii Alrai who were also inspired by Yorkshire and Cornish landscapes. Alongside works from Hepworth and Moore that reveal the continuing inspiration that they drew from the land.