[2] According to Moore, speaking years later, the work was inspired by double statues of male and female figures from Ancient Egypt, and by fairy tales read to his daughter Mary.

Art critics have suggested links with the accession of Elizabeth II in 1952, and have identified a strikingly similar photograph of Moore and his wife Irina seated beside each other c.1952, in which Moore has one hand clenched in his lap and the other on the arm of the sofa, and Irina sits beside him with her fingers interlaced.

It was used to scale up the sculpture to a full-size plaster working model, Maquette for King and Queen 1952–3.

Moore paid special attention to hands in the final model, to give it additional interest for the viewer.

In the final work, Moore left out the square frame behind the figures in the maquette: he said it made them look like they were goalkeepers at a soccer game.

It was bought by the city of Antwerp for the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum, where it remains.

[5] A third cast was exhibited at the Curt Valentin Gallery in New York, was bought by Joseph H. Hirshhorn, and is now in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.[6] A fourth cast was exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London in February 1954, to mixed reviews, some disliking the mixture of figurative and abstract elements.

It was bought by newspaper editor David Astor, and displayed at his home in St John's Wood, until sold to the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena in 1976.

[7] A fifth cast was made for the Tate Gallery in 1957, acquired using funds donated by Associated Rediffusion, delivered in early 1959.

[2] It measures 163.5 by 138.5 by 84.5 centimetres (64.4 in × 54.5 in × 33.3 in) The original artist's copy (cast 0) is now in the collection of the MOA Museum of Art in Atami, Japan.

A second artist's copy, cast 00, was created in the 1980s for the Henry Moore Foundation, and is displayed at Perry Green, Hertfordshire.