The Island Gallery – Purple Faye's blog

On Friday (21st October 2016) I went to visit the Henry Moore exhibition at The Island Gallery, Queen’s Mill, Castleford.

8th- 29th October, open 10am-4pm Mon-Sat.

“Castleford Heritage Trust and Sandra Worthington present HENRY MOORE AN ARTISTIC LEGACY – A COLLECTION OF HIS SHELTER SKETCHBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS PLUS WORKS BY THE LATE ROBERT GLADE

All items in the exhibition are loaned by their owner Sandra Worthington.

Robert Glade (1926-2015) grew up in the mid-west during America’s Depression and moved to Chicago in the 1950’s to join the beat poets and musicians in ‘the windy city’. It was in the early 1960’s when Glade met Castleford born Sandra Worthington who was working as a teacher, they moved into an appartment together and in 1966 became engaged. In 1968 Sandra brought Glade to Europe where they toured the art galleries of capital cities, during this time Glade also visited Castleford where Sandra’s father, a miner, took him crown green bowling in Queen’s Park. From this point on Glade became an arts dealer and collector amassing a great collection of works which included the Henry Moore collotypes. On his death he bequeathed the collotypes to Sandra who has allowed the exhibition to take place.

The works by Moore feature a series of collotypes from his time sheltering from the Blitz in Belsize Park underground railway station. Moore’s studio in Hampstead was out of action at that time (1940) due to bomb damage, the sketches were subsequently seen by Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery who persuaded Moore to become an official war artist.”