The Vector

Barbara Hepworth sculpture leads £8m auction

Sculpture with Colour (Eos) will headline Christie’s modern British and Irish art sale in London.

Barbara Hepworth’s Sculpture with Colour (Eos) is expected to fetch between £5 million and £8 million when it is auctioned in London later this month. Christie’s announced on Monday that the 1946 work will lead its Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale.

The estimate places the stone sculpture among the most valuable works in the 21 October sale. Christie’s said the piece was carved and painted in 1946, during a pivotal period in Hepworth’s career, and combines direct carving with three painted hollows in blue, pale grey and white.

The work was made from a single piece of pale Hopton Wood stone. Its title refers to Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn, while its upright, rounded form reflects Hepworth’s interest in the relationship between mass, space and light. The auction house describes it as an example of her effort to work with the character of the material rather than conceal it.

Sculpture with Colour (Eos) has a substantial exhibition history. Christie’s said it appeared in exhibitions connected with Hepworth’s work from the 1940s onwards, including shows at London’s Whitechapel Gallery and the Tate. It was also included in the Courtauld Gallery’s Hepworth in Colour exhibition, which ran in London earlier this year.

The sculpture was photographed beside Hepworth by Lee Miller for Vogue in 1946, shortly after it was completed. Hepworth had moved to Cornwall during the Second World War, and the Cornish landscape became a major influence on her work. The coast around St Ives, including its cliffs, sea arches and changing light, informed much of her later artistic language.

The work will be on public view at Christie’s in London until 14 October and again from 17 to 21 October. The viewings are free. The auction estimate is not a guaranteed sale price: the final amount will depend on bidding and will be separate from any buyer’s premium or other charges.

Christie’s holds the auction record for a Hepworth work. The Independent reported that The Family of Man: Ancestor II sold for £10.7 million in 2023. That earlier result provides market context, but it does not predict what Sculpture with Colour (Eos) will realise.

The sale will be watched as another test of demand for major British modernist art, but no buyer has been identified and no sale has yet taken place. The confirmed details are the work’s selection as the leading lot and the published estimate; its eventual price remains unknown.

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