‘I want to be quite free of having to find a ‘reason’ for doing the Reclining Figures, and freer still of having to find a ‘meaning’ for them. The vital thing for an artist is to have a subject that allows [him] to try out all kinds of formal ideas – things that he doesn’t yet know about for certain but wants to experiment with, as Cézanne did in this ‘Bathers’ series. In my case the reclining figure provides chances of that sort. The subject-matter is given. It’s settled for you, and you know it and like it, so that within it, within the subject that you’ve done a dozen t.mes s before, you are free to invent a completely new form-idea’
HENRY MOORE QUOTED IN J. RUSSELL, HENRY MOORE, LONDON, 1968, P. 22

The subject of the reclining figure, initially inspired by Pre-Columbian forms from the ancient Americas, was one of Moore's chief preoccupations throughout his long career. He commented that:
‘From the very beginning the reclining figure has been my main theme. The first one I made was around 1924, and probably more than half of my sculptures since then have been reclining figures’
(Henry Moore, quoted in John Hedgecoe, ed., Henry Moore, London, 1968, p. 151).

In other interviews he explained his predilection for this form, and the spatial challenges that it presented for him:

‘There are three fundamental poses of the human figure. One is standing, the other is seated, and the third is lying down.... But of the three poses, the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially. The seated figure has to have something to sit on. You can't free it from its pedestal. A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same t.mes . It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity’
(Henry Moore, quoted in Henry Moore, The Reclining Figure (exhibition catalogue), Columbus Museum of Art, 1984, p. 26).

Conceived in 1939, the present work is notable for its incorporation of the blanket, as it predates Moore’s famous shelter drawings. Moore began these following a visit to Belsize Park Tube in 1940, where he witnessed families seeking protection from the Blitz, huddled together, often under one blanket. The blanket as a subject clearly appealed to Moore, both in its formal ability to accentuate the bodily form beneath, and as a metaphor of protection.