"The importance of Reclining Figure: Festival lies not only in the significance of the commission itself but also because it functions, as Moore recognized, as a 'key' to this period of his work. It represents the culmination of ideas Moore had developed on the theme of the reclining figure in the previous decades, whilst concomitantly inaugurating a new working method and ushering in stylistic innovations. This new working method, one which would henceforth shape Moore's approach to sculpture, involved the progression from maquette, to working model and subsequently to the large scale work; the stylistic innovations explored in Reclining Figure: Festival were a new equivalence of form and space and the introduction of raised tracery-like lines upon the surface of the sculpture."