Moore's draped figures developed from a series of drawings inspired by his observations of people in underground bomb shelters during the Second World War.

In 1968, Moore commented that "it is as though the three women are standing there, expecting something to happen from the sky" Sylvester published an essay in The Burlington Magazine in 1948 with an unusual interpretation, as a family group: the protective mother, the stern father, and the child on the far right.

The work in Battersea Park was carved between August 1947 and May 1948 from Darley Dale sandstone, one of the last statues that Moore made from English stone.

(MOMA took instead a cast of Moore's first large bronze, Family Group from The Barclay School in Stevenage, itself originally intended for Walter Gropius's Impington Village College.)

His reputation grew dramatically from 1948, when he was a selected as Britain's greatest living artist for the 24th Venice Biennale and won the sculpture prize.