Moore produced maquettes as precursors for many of his sculptures, each varying in terms of size and material. The artist kept a ‘library of natural forms’ including shells, bones, and stones in his studio from which he garnered inspiration for larger pieces. Moore would use these found objects to mould the plaster casts vital in the preliminary design stages. Moore viewed maquettes not only as prototypes of a final piece, but as works of art in and of themselves and (given that Moore worked on them entirely independently) as the purest expressions of the artist's vision. What accommodations would have to be made later to adapt to the landscape, commission, or practicalities of construction were not necessary for maquettes. Nonetheless, in this case the maquette and final piece remain very similar, although the latter is somewhat more inward looking and interactive than the former.

The monumental bronze sculpture for which this maquette was produced, Three Standing Figures (1953), currently resides at the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. Moore had an enduring interest in depicting groups, and would return to the motif of the trio several times, notably in his Three Standing Figures (1947) ultimately produced for London's Battersea Park. This interest can arguably be traced back to the Shelter drawings of the early 1940s, which Moore sketched as a war artist whilst taking refuge in tube stations during the Blitz. Unlike the Shelter drawings however, these Three Standing Figures are not cowed together but aloof from each other, standing tall and resolute. Although each complement the others, Moore could have sculpted them independently. They are distinct in this way from the group-oriented, inward looking trio of the 1947 Three Standing Figures, which Moore expressly said was an attempt to capture the community feeling of the Shelter drawings.

The maquette for Three Standing Figures abstracts the human form whilst still remaining figurative, and exaggerates the figures' gestures to the extent that they come to encompass the identity of their expressionless subjects. Moore was partly influenced by the Surrealists Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacommetti. Parallels can particularly be identified between work like Three Standing Figures and Picasso’s An Anatomy (1933), which Moore may have studied. In An Anatomy, Picasso presents his vision of a deconstructed human form composed of various shapes built on each other.