This drawing relates to Moore's sculpture Caryatid carved in Portland stone in 1924.

The classical subject of this drawing suggests the impact of Moore's travels in Italy in 1924 which led him to lament that `of great sculpture I've seen very little . What I know of Indian, Egyptian and Mexican sculpture completely overshadows Renaissance sculpture' and to conclude that in Western sculpture there was a `widespread avoidance of thinking and working in stone . the only hope I can see for a school of sculpture in England, under our present system, is a good artist working carving in the big tradition of sculpture.' Henry Moore, letter to William Rothenstein, 12 March 1924.

With its strong sense of the block of stone from which the figure was to be carved Studies for Sculpture indicates the lessons Moore learnt from the solidity and monumentality of Jacob Epstein's recent work in Portland stone. Indeed it was in the mid 1920s, when Epstein was Britain's most famous sculptor and Moore's career was only just beginning, that the two men first met. Epstein's would soon become one of the first collectors of Moore's work and would write the foreword to the artist's exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1931.

Recorded by the Henry Moore Foundation under archive number HMF 362.