Henry Moore sculpture once on show in Scotland sells for £26m

It was inspired in part by an Egyptian sculpture in the British Museum and once stood in a Scottish sculpture park.

Now a piece of art by Henry Moore - the last cast of the work by the artist to remain in private hands - has been sold at auction for £26 million.

King and Queen, a bronze sculpture which depicts, unusually for Moore, both a male and female form, was on display at the Glenkiln sculpture park in Dumfries and Galloway until it was vandalised in 1995.

The park, created by local landowner Sir William Keswick and which aimed to showcase sculptures outdoors, also included a total of four works by Moore, as well as two others by Auguste Rodin and Jacob Epstein.

However, King and Queen, which sat on a site overlooking Glenkiln reservoir, was decapitated and the heads found separately. They were later reattached, but the sculpture was taken off public display.

Katharine Arnold, vice-chairman 20/21 at Christie's, said the sale of the work was an “exceptionally rare opportunity” for art collectors.

She said: “This sculpture captures a pivotal moment in the artist's career, when his study of the human form achieved a striking balance of shape and space, resulting in figures that are both unmistakably modern and timeless.”

A gallery assistant poses with artist Henry Moore's masterpiece 'King and Queen'. | AFP via Getty Images

The work was originally believed to have been created in anticipation of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. However, Moore, who is described by Christie’s as “the pre-eminent British sculptor”, but turned down a knighthood in 1951, insisted it was actually inspired by fairy tales he read to his daughter and an 18th-dynasty limestone double portrait of an Egyptian ruler and his wife in the British Museum.

“For me, these two people are terribly real and I feel the difference between male and female,” Moore said. “The sculptor has done it in an obvious way by making the man slightly bigger than the woman, but it works, and this influenced me when I came to make my bronze King and Queen.”

King and Queen was cast in bronze in an edition of four, plus one artist’s copy, by the Galizia Foundry, London, in 1952-53. Two subsequent bronzes were cast specifically for the collections of the Tate Gallery, London and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Art critic Robert Melville described the sculpture as “Moore’s finest achievement since the war, and probably the most graceful of all his works”.

Regarded as one of the greatest British artists, in 1948, Moore won the International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale, a success that led to major public commissions around the world.

King and Queen was sold for £26.34m at Christie’s 20th/21st Century Sale in London.

In 2005, one of Moore’s sculptures, Reclining Figure, was stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. The two tonne piece, made in 1969 out of solid bronze, was winched by crane on to a Mercedes flatbed lorry. In 1997, one of Moore’s smaller sculptures, worth £52,000, was stolen from the Waddington Gallery in London, but was subsequently found in a London taxi.