Henry Moore's "Four Piece Reclining Figure" since Saturday has reclined across from the entrance to Lamont Library. The work, whose value is estimated to be $500,000, was donated to the University by David Bakalar '46.

"I've been interested in art for a long time," Bakalar said yesterday, "and I wanted to do something for the University. I chose this piece because it was the most beautiful I've ever seen." Bakalar purchased the sculpture from a private owner who had bought it from Moore on the condition that it would eventually be displayed in a park or similar outdoor setting.

"The exciting thing is that it is the first monumental Moore at Harvard," Jeanne Wasserman, assistant director of the Fogg Art Museum, said yesterday.

Moore, widely regarded as the foremost British sculptor of the century, created the work at his foundry in Nowack, Germany, in the early 1970s as part of an edition of seven identical sculptures. The sculpture, which is six feet high, is cast in brass with a gold patina.

The subject of the piece, the reclining female figure, has been a favorite theme of Moore, who has depicted it with increasing abstractness during his more than fifty-year-long career, Wasserman said.