Market dispatch·London
£8M Hepworth 'Dawn' Sculpture Heads Christie's Modern British Evening Sale on 21 October
Christie's has named Barbara Hepworth's 1946 Sculpture with Colour (Eos), estimated at £5–8 million, as the lead lot of its Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale in London on 21 October. One of only three painted stone carvings Hepworth made in 1946, the work was photographed by Lee Miller for Vogue and has been shown at the Tate, the Whitechapel and the Courtauld.
Christie's has named Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture with Colour (Eos) as the centrepiece of its Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale in London on 21 October, estimated at £5 million to £8 million. Announced on 12 October, the 1946 carving is positioned as the defining lot of the auction house's autumn season for 20th-century British art. Carved from one block of pale Hopton Wood stone, the sculpture rises as an ovoid form balanced on its narrowest point. Three hollows across its surface carry painted colour in deep blue, pale grey and off-white. The carving belongs to a turning point in Hepworth's practice: 1946 was the year colour became a structural part of her sculpture rather than decoration. It is one of only three stone works from that year known to combine carving with applied paint. Its subtitle comes from Eos, the Greek goddess of dawn, and the painted cavities evoke daybreak light, ocean depth and open sky. The sculpture's record of ownership and exhibition gives it unusual weight. It was made the year of her first solo show after the Second World War, at London's Lefevre Gallery, and later appeared in retrospectives at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1954 and the Tate in 1968. It was most recently shown in Hepworth in Colour at the Courtauld Gallery this summer. The work comes from the collection of philanthropists David and Geraldine Pincus, and shortly after its completion Lee Miller photographed Hepworth in her studio beside it for Vogue. Around the Eos lot, the sale traces the breadth of Hepworth's practice: the elm carving Figure (Sunion) from 1960, the bronze Sea Form (Porthmeor) from 1958 — the only cast still in private hands — the brass-and-string Orpheus (Maquette 1) and the alabaster Godrevy of 1959. The evening also includes Henry Moore's Family Group of 1947 and Frank Bowling's Degaulle G.E.P., the first of his Map Paintings to appear at auction. Christie's holds the auction record for Hepworth at £10.7 million, set in 2023. The sculpture is on public view at Christie's London until 14 October and again from 17 to 21 October.
