Enlarged from a maquette only a few inches high, The Arch is one of the largest and most dramatic examples of Moore’s sculpture in the open air. As with many of the works on view, the original inspiration for this came from a fragment of bone. Concerned that his sculpture should have a sense of monumentality and energy without appearing merely big and heavy, Moore commented: ’One of the things I would like to think my sculpture has is a force, is a strength, is a life, a vitality from inside it, so that you have the sense that the form is pressing from inside trying to burst or trying to give of the strength from inside itself... This is, perhaps, what makes me interested in bones as much as in flesh because the bone is the inner structure of all living form’.