Seeing Double!

Here’s fun. Double fun!

I went to visit the Tate Britain gallery in London at the weekend to see the fantastic Richard Deacon exhibition and while I was there I had a look round the entire gallery as it has recently undergone some major renovation.

Interior at the Tate Britain

The day after that I went for a long walk around RHS Wisley gardens in Surrey to soak up some Spring sunshine. As I approached the ‘house’ or laboratories at Wisley I had to do a double take as I saw a new sculpture that looked strikingly familiar. I’m usually quite good at making speedy visual connections but I was embarrassingly slow with this one as I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it before. (Is now a bad time to discover that my photographic memory has flaws?!) But then I remembered: I’d only seen it the previous day at the Tate! And I’d even taken a picture of it, as I liked it so much.

  
King and Queen at the Tate                  King and Queen at Wisley              

The King and Queen sculpture by Henry Moore (1953) is the culmination of a number of studies of heads and single figures. The title was inspired by his readings of fairy tales to his six-year-old daughter Mary. ‘King and Queen’ was created in an edition of six bronze casts plus this one at Wisley, which is the artist’s copy.

I can’t believe I’ve seen two editions of a Henry Moore sculpture in as many days!

The sculpture will be at Wisley until September 2014.