Henry Moore is best known for his monumental bronze sculptures. His wartime sketches of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from the Blitz are also widely known and admired. Now a book and accompanying exhibition are drawing attention to a lesser known series of drawings of coal miners at work.

Moore was a miner’s son from Castleford in Yorkshire, and commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, in 1942 he spent a week at Wheldale Colliery, where his father had worked, sketching from observation before developing a detailed series of more than one hundred drawings, all of which were completed within six months.

Eighty years since they were completed, the drawings are now on show at St Albans Museum and Gallery, in an exhibition that invites visitors to journey from quick pencil sketches, through developmental drawings, finished pieces and finally to later works inspired by Moore’s coalmining experience.

The exhibition takes inspiration from the book Drawing in the Dark, by art historian Chris Owen, which features previously unpublished imagery from the Henry Moore Foundation’s archives, and explores every aspect of the commission – from Moore’s return to his childhood home and the challenges associated with ‘drawing in the dark’ to the significant influence of the project on Moore’s later work, including the Warrior and Helmet Head sculptures, and his little-known illustrations to W.H. Auden’s poetry.

Henry Moore: Drawing in the Dark exhibition at St Albans Museum and Gallery runs from 16 December 2022 until 16 April 2023.

Drawing in the Dark: Henry Moore’s Coalmining Commission, by Chris Owen, London: Lund Humphreys, 2022, pp.168, h/b, £40, ISBN 9781848226036.