Curated by University of Hertfordshire Arts + Culture, the exhibition is played out within the theatre of the dark-walled, subterranean Weston Gallery of St Albans Museum + Gallery.

The largest exhibition of coalmining drawings by celebrated artist, Henry Moore, will be shown this December at St Albans Museum + Gallery – eighty years since they were completed for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC).

Moore is famous for his sculpture, particularly of women and abstract forms, and his drawings of Londoners sheltering from the blitz in 1940 are also well known. But it is often forgotten that Moore was the son of a miner from Castleford in Yorkshire, and as a war artist he developed a detailed series of drawings from sketches he made in 1942 at Wheldale Colliery where his father had worked. Moore spent one week in the mine drawing from observation and then worked from memory to create the remaining drawings, which were all completed within six months.