The travel and travails of Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman ‘Old Flo’ from Stepney, to Yorkshire and back to Canary Wharf

 Henry Moore carved his ‘Draped Seated Woman’ for a Stepney Council Estate, so is its current home in Canary Wharf a betrayal of her intended purpose?

Henry Moore created his Draped Seated Woman statue, affectionately known as Old Flo, back in the 1950s to watch over Stepney’s now-demolished Stifford council estate. 

The much-travelled statue has since ping-ponged from Stepney to Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1997 for a twenty-year sojourn during which time Mayor Luftur Rahman attempted to sell it, but then returned to Tower Hamlets in 2017, this time to Canary Wharf, under the mayorship of John Biggs. 

It was Mayor Rahman’s controversial attempt to sell the previously forgotten statue, listed at Christie’s auction house for £20m in 2015, that triggered significant opposition from art critics, the Guardian newspaper, and Tower Hamlets residents. 

After a high court battle in 2015 over the Council’s right to sell Old Flo, Tower Hamlets was confirmed as its owner. By this point, Rahman had been ousted from office and his successor, John Biggs, pledged to stop the sale, so the ruling became academic. 

Despite plans to return the statue closer to its original location in Whitechapel in 2022, Old Flo still holds court in the Wharf. Will she ever return, and has her current home made her, as the Guardian argues a ‘bloodless piece of corporate art’?

Born from Stepney, made for Stepney, loved in Stepney

Stoic and stately, her boxlike stature is softened by the curves of her limbs and the classical Greek draping revealing the buds of small breasts, reminding us of her feminity and the rebirth of civic aspirations, post-war. 

In 1956/7 when she was commissioned and carved much of London had been blitzed by the Nazis, but she reflected the hope inherent in the creation of the welfare state and NHS. Money was scarce thus the allocation of funding for public art was a testament to the belief in its power to impact people’s everyday lives. 

For Mark Richards, a previous Director of the Museum of London she is the archetypal earth mother.

He wrote in the Gentle Author’s blog, Spitalfields Life: ‘I always thought of this sculpture as being a mother listening to the falls of bombs outside the shelter and wondering whether her children, friends or house would survive.’

With her slightly parted legs and defiantly angled head she imposes life-giving, stalwart strength on her surroundings. She was inspired by Moore’s drawings of Londoners sheltering in tube stations during the Blitz, many of which were Stepney residents. 

Moore was the official war artist, and his poignant drawings were a sensitive and powerful response to the war that touched the popular imagination. His work is often seen as an enmeshment of the public and private spheres- deeply personal, at times autobiographical almost accidentally capturing the mood of the country. His investigation of the mother and child seemed to comfort a nation cowed by war. This rang particularly true in the East End which had suffered disproportionately during the Blitz.

Talking about his war drawings, Moore described them as: ‘A fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.’

He said of Old Flo: ‘I was unconsciously giving back to the long-forgotten shape of the one I had often rubbed as a boy’ referring to rubbing his mother’s back when it was swollen with rheumatism.

Born to a miner in Castleford Yorkshire on 30 July 1898 Moore was a lifelong socialist used to hacking value out of the earth. Having fought in the trenches in the First World War, and after a brief time as a school teacher, Moore went to art school on a veteran grant and by the 1950s was receiving international acclaim as an artist. 

Having straddled the class divide he generously sold Old Flo at cost, a sum of £7,000, to the London County Council in 1962 to be given to those who had inspired her- the people of Stepney. Critics contend that Old Flo is a tribute to the East End’s sacrifice not only during the war but also during the Industrial Revolution; underappreciated and essential much like mothers. 

At 2.5m tall, Old Flo is formed of 1.6 tonnes of bronze. She was inserted into the lived landscape rather than in a cultural edifice, for children to clamber on. 

Many Stepney locals fondly remember climbing over her large limbs as children. Joanne Adams, Matt O’Leary and Chris O’Leary who lived nearby on Jamaica Street in the 1960s remember using her as a climbing frame in Stifford Estate. 

Nowadays, times have changed and opinion is split about whether the current resting place in Canary Wharf is a betrayal of the meaning of Moores’s work. 

Joanne thinks Old Flo looks better in the Wharf and Matt thinks that the tight security of the financial hub is necessary to prevent theft or damage: ‘It’s great to see the statue back on public display in an area with security around the clock.’

Allan Xerxes Cousens thinks: ‘If it was put back in its original location, without any security, such a valuable piece by Henry Moore would likely be stolen and maybe melted down.’

However, Mickey Cabbie argued the statue is: ‘Something else stolen from the poor and given to the rich… put her back in Whitechapel or Bethnal Green.’

The vast majority of commentators oppose Rahman’s attempt to sell it. 

Matt O’Leary said: ‘It was scandalous that there was an attempt to try to cash in on the statue that was purchased at a fraction of its value as a gift to the borough.’

The Labour mayor who returned her to the borough John Biggs said: ‘There was a broader issue that it was donated to the people of Stepney, do the current occupiers of the Town Hall have a right to sell it without being pretty thoughtful about the circumstances and way in which their doing it.

‘I don’t want to interfere but you’ve got to have a pretty good reason and he didn’t have a very good reason.’ 

Travelling soldier

Part of a drive to install public art by the London County Council (LCC) in the 1960s, Old Flo was commissioned with 70 other pieces. 

Despite the dire state of government finances and the urgent need to rebuild a blitzed Britain, the LCC reserved £20 million to uplift Londoner’s lives through art. The valiant idea was that the lives of even the poorest society could be uplifted by art.

Stifford estate and the LCC’s public art passed to the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965, and Old Flo remained unperturbed on the estate until its demolishment in 1997. 

She was then moved to Yorkshire Sculpture Park for ‘safekeeping’ and repaired where children’s boots and weather had left her pockmarked. She remained there forgotten for 15 years. 

In 2012 the then Mayor Luftur Rahman decided to sell her to plug the yawning deficit in the Tower Hamlets Council’s finances. 

In the era of austerity, Rahman said: ‘We are faced with a stark choice in these times of recession.’

Yet Rahman’s campaign had stressed the importance of East End heritage and this caused a public outrage. Thousands marched in opposition to the sale. Impervious to this public pressure, Rahman pushed forward with the sale arguing the proceeds would be spent on affordable housing.

However, his successor John Biggs said on whether the sale was financially necessary: ‘Clearly it wasn’t because the council had quite significant reserves.’ 

In a quirk of history, the Greater London Council’s pricey public art collection had been accidentally transferred to Bromley after its dissolution in 1986. 

A small team of art aficionados including Mark Richards convinced Bromley Council in south London to sue Tower Hamlets to block the sale. This forced Rahman to de-list Old Flo from a Christie’s Auction where she was marketed at £20 million in January 2013. 

Rahman was quietly being investigated for electoral fraud and the high court case was rendered academic after he was found ‘personally guilty of corrupt and illegal practises’ and removed from office on 23 April 2015. 

His successor Labour’s John Biggs was outspoken about his commitment to bringing Old Flo home.

Boujie betrayal

With the Stifford Estate demolished, returning Old Flo to her original home in E1 and the people of Stepney proved complicated. A spurt of thefts of public art, including two Moore works stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation meant insurance costs were seen as prohibitive. In 2005 his Monumental Reclining Figure was stolen never to be seen again and in 2012 his Bronze sundial was stolen. The latter was recovered after being broadcast on BBC’s Crimewatch.  

John Biggs said: ‘We looked for a home of E1, because it was given to the people of Stepney and there wasn’t an obvious one… but the intention has always been that it occupy a courtyard at the back of the new Town Hall.’

The lure of Canary Wharf and its state-of-the-art security won out. Originally this was set to be a temporary measure with the view to move it behind the new Town Hall in Whitechapel when it was set to be completed in 2022.  

Yet the Old Flo remains in the financial district today, enjoyed mainly by transient bankers and Waitrose shoppers. Luftur Rahman is back in power and the Town Hall is finished but Biggs has pointed out: ‘the fate of that piece of art isn’t really a priority for him.’

Her homecoming is also likely to be delayed by the recent planning approval for the bio-medical Sciences campus. It will mean the square behind the Town Hall in Whitechapel which was earmarked for Old Flo will be a building site for the foreseeable future.

John Biggs told us: ‘The History of the East End is written in all sorts of codes, events and languages  and this is an important symbol of that.’

‘You can’t eat a statue, but it’s part of our heritage, part of our story and one of the reasons the East End still looms large in the nation’s psyche and story.’

‘To sell, to dispose of it, would have to be done in an act of desperation and I don’t think we are at that stage yet.’

Ironically, Old Flo’s spot in Canary Wharf situates a public piece of art on private land. Available for public viewing yes, but just as she is safe from theft, she is closely monitored by security staff and it is doubtful any children will clamber on her. 

Perennially poor Tower Hamlets and the East End’s architecture have predominantly been poorly built, and transient. Old Flo is one of the few tangible, lasting pieces of heritage dedicated to an area which has been neglected by rich donors. Bronze unlike tower blocks does not rust.  Consciously placed to be interacted with, to be lived with to be part of Stepney’s life does her lifeblood still pulse while she remains in the sanitised Wharf?

The theory behind placing developments such as Canary Wharf in less affluent areas is that their wealth trickles through the area. John Biggs thinks there is little prospect of Old Flo being auctioned again due to the political headache that occurred last time, but also little chance of her imminent return. Without a jolt of grassroots activism, it’s looking like she will stay put in Cabot Square orphaned from her people.

If you liked this read Illustrator Anna Steinberg’s reluctant boxing date and her illustrated take on the electricity of York Hall