Time/Life Screen: Maquette No. 4 is a relief sculpture that relates to one of Henry Moore’s most significant public commissions of the fifties. The rectangular tableau is divided into four compartments, each of which contains an abstract humanoid figure. The shapely, individuated forms of these figures is enhanced by perforations in the material, which transformed the relief into a screen and enabled the artist to free the figures from their surrounding framework. The figures are composed from organic forms redolent of standing stones and pre-Columbian sculpture, though no specific reference is intended to either. The two outer compartments are separated from their neighbours by a pair of incised lines, while the inner compartments are separated by a single line. A narrow stylobate runs along the lower portion of the relief, echoing the band of stone that runs beneath the final commission.

Time/Life Screen: Maquette No. 4 relates to the stone frieze on the Time/Life Building (fig. 1). In 1952, Moore was commissioned to carve a screen for the facade of the new Time/Life’s new offices on New Bond Street in London, and additionally to make a bronze 'Draped Reclining Figure' for the building’s terrace. Work was completed in 1953. Moore produced a total of four maquettes in the course of preparing the commission. Shortly after the commission was completed, Moore reflected on his Time/Life Building sculptures and stated that ‘the fourth maquette I thought was better and more varied and so became the definitive maquette, although a further working model produced other change.’

The original plaster model for Time/Life Screen: Maquette No. 4 was given by the artist to the Henry Moore Foundation in 1977. Other bronze casts of this work are owned by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Colchester and Ipswich Museums. A further cast was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, on 5 October 2020. Each cast has a slightly different patination: this cast and that in Colchester and Ipswich Museums have green patinas; the cast in the Art Gallery of Ontario is black in colour; and the cast sold at Sotheby’s in 2020 is bronzed and dark gold.

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Moore’s reflections on the Time/Life Building sculptures are included here:

"I was asked to make a free standing piece of sculpture for the terrace of the Time-Life building in Bond Street, London, and a reclining figure was decided upon, as being more suitable to the proportions of the terrace. […]

"It was while thinking about this ‘Reclining Figure’ that the architect approached me about the sculptured ‘Screen’, at the Bond Street end of the terrace, and I welcomed the chance of working simultaneously upon two such entirely different sculptural problems.

"It seemed to me that the ‘Screen’ should look as though it was part of the architecture, for it is a continuation of the surface of the building – and is an obvious part of the building.

"The fact that it is only a screen with space behind it, led me to carve it with a back as well as a front, and to pierce it, which gives an interesting penetration of light, and also from Bond Street makes it obvious that it is a screen and not a solid part of the building.

"With the perspective sketch of the building beside me I made four maquettes and my aim was to give a rhythm to the spacing and sizes of the sculptural motives which should be in harmony with the architecture. I rejected the idea of a portrayal of some pictorial scene, for that would only be like hanging up a stone picture, like using the position only as a hoarding for sticking on a stone poster.

"The first of the four maquettes I rejected because I thought it too obvious and regular a repetition of the fenestration of the building.

"In the second maquette I tried to vary this and make it less symmetrical but in doing so the rhythms became too vertical.

"In the third maquette I tried to introduce a more horizontal rhythm but was dissatisfied with the monotony of the size of the forms.

"The fourth maquette I thought was better and more varied and so this became the definitive maquette, although a further working model produced further changes.

"In working on the four separate sculptural elements in the ‘Screen’, here outside my studio, preparatory to the ‘Screen’ being erected on the building, there were other changes – for example, I made the openings larger to give the four sculptural units more individual power and importance.

"I conceived the idea that if each of the four motives could, on occasions, be turned, i.e., put at an angle to the surface of the building instead of continuous with it, that also would give them more sculptural interest. I don’t mean that they should turn continually but that to have been able to turn each at different angles, say once every two or three months, perhaps at different seasons on the year, would have created a new relationship. However, this was found too difficult and too expensive to do at that late stage. […] "