Book wide text
History of Sculpture Notebook, 1920
Leeds Museums and Galleries: gift of Jocelyn Horner
Black paper-covered boards quarter-bound in black cloth 229 x 182mm now containing 40 pages of cream lightweight laid paper 229 x 180mm, with seven pages detached and many others missing.
The notebook is too fragmentary to ascertain the number of pages per signature, though six signatures are certain with up to sixteen pages per signature possible. They were never signed or dated by the artist. The pages were originally unnumbered but at some time after 1991 were numbered in pencil top right on the recto by the present owner. On the inside of the front cover, upper left, is a stuck-on label describing the notebook as 'Bushey sketchbook - for pen or pencil'.
The name 'Bushey' has sometimes been misleadingly used to describe the notebook. The notebook contents are primarily a collection of short texts on the history of sculpture made while Moore was a student at Leeds School of Art. Blank pages or pages with only an inscription have not been included in the catalogue raisonné or given AG numbers, though each carries an HMF archive number. Although the notebook was bound in portrait format a number of pages were drawn on in landscape and have been described and illustrated accordingly.
Text for this spread
HMF 20(4) verso and HMF 20(5)
inscription: pen and ink: National Hist came to an end in 304 BC./When Egypt was conquered by the Persians + again in 332 BC was taken by Alexander the Great from the Persians./Eqyptian Civilisation – Egypt is the only/civilization because there the conditions were/fulfilled sooner than anywhere else of security/+leisure. Egypt is fed from the Nile which/overflows its banks irrigates the country+brings/with it more fertility than can be exhausted/in 12 months. The river rises gradually + as gradually subsides. The changes can be foretold almost to a day. In the Nile valley/man found himself able for the 1st time to/calculate on the forces of nature + to turn them to his own use. Man obtained his food with/little labour. The Nile mud deposited can be turned over with the minimum of trouble +/plant life springs up with extraordinary/rapidity. Man therefore had leisure. The/tribes who settled in the Nile Valley in centuries/so remote that they are beyond tradition could