Henry Moore was fascinated by direct carving, the art of carving stone directly without a model or template, and this sculpture epitomises his vision during the early 1930s. Carved from Ancaster stone, a local material found in the East Midlands of England, the work’s weight and texture reinforce the monumentality of the figure. Characteristic of Moore’s style, the form is simplified, and he has discarded the notion of the individual by generalising the facial features. Moore’s reductionist aesthetic is here partly inspired by archaic Greek and Oceanic sculptures that he studied in the British Museum.