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Henry Moore's Tube Shelter Perspective: The Liverpool Street Extension 1941. Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation

A key World War II drawing by Henry Moore was inspired not by the sculptor's own experiences but by photographs, Sussex art historian David Alan Mellor has revealed as a major retrospective of Moore's work opens in London.

The Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain features 150 stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.

During World War II, Moore was on the cusp of international fame as an artist. One of his gouache and ink Shelter Drawings of that period, depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz, was supposedly inspired by a night-time journey on the London Underground in 1940 and helped to forge his reputation.

Morre was confirmed as Britain's Official War Artist in 1940 and the drawings gained symbolic status in the battle for hearts and minds against the Nazis. They were displayed in the National Gallery in London and featured in an exhibition to encourage the Americans to join with the Allies against Hitler.

Now David, a scholar and curator of contemporary art, has identified magazine photographs that served as the blueprints for the Shelter Drawings. His discovery challenges Moore's own account of how he came to produce the drawings.

According to Moore, he produced the first of the series, Women and Children in the Tube, on 12 September 1940, following a trip on the Northern Line on 11 September.

However, David discovered that the work was actually based on a photograph that appeared in Picture Post magazine in October 1940, which was used to illustrate an article on mothers made homeless by the Blitz.

His drawing Morning after the Blitz was similarly influenced by another photograph in Picture Post. The poses in the photographs are identical to those in Moore's drawings. Several other images have been identified as having their origins in magazine photographs.

David, who specialises in 20^th-century art forms such as photography, made the connection while researching an essay for the catalogue that accompanies the Tate exhibition.

He says: "All artists working after the invention of photography have used the medium to some extent - it adds grit to their creative process. What we didn't know was that the moving image which Moore drew - of homeless nursing mothers and infants - had its origin in a popular photo-reporting magazine and didn't come simply from his own observations.

"This in no way lessens the achievement of this key drawing. On the contrary, it makes it more complex and leaves us with an image bearing the direct imprint of the circumstances of the Blitz."

The exhibition, curated by University of Sussex DPhil graduate Christopher Stephens, runs until 8 August.