A Dame Barbara Hepworth sculpture is expected to sell for up to £8m when it goes up for auction this month.
Titled Sculpture with Colour (Eos), the piece will be the leading highlight of Christie’s modern British and Irish art evening sale.
The auction house has estimated the piece could sell for between £5 million and £8 million.
Carved in 1946 from a single piece of pale Hopton Wood stone, Christie’s has described the piece as rising from its base as an organic ovoid form, balanced delicately on its narrowest point.
It added that the sculpture also illustrates Dame Barbara’s commitment to “truth to materials” and direct carving, producing unique works that came solely from tools she wielded herself.
Named after the Greek goddess of dawn, Christie’s said the piece’s swelling form “suggests emergence, awakening and renewal: a new world coming into being”.
Across the surface of Sculpture with Colour (Eos), three delicately-shaped hollows have been accentuated by the addition of paint – a deep, rich blue, a subtle pale grey and pure white.
The piece is also one of only three known coloured stone carvings by the artist from 1946.
It was also featured in a photograph of the artist taken by Lee Miller for Vogue in 1946 and recently appeared in the exhibition Hepworth in Colour at the Courtauld Gallery in London.
The piece was made after Dame Barbara had moved to Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War, living in Carbis Bay, not far from St Ives.
Christie’s said the artist “immersed herself in the coastal landscape, absorbing impressions of the play of light across the water, as well as the natural, organic forms of cliffs, sea arches and ancient monuments that she discovered there”.
It added that the Cornish landscape “strongly influenced” her work, with the region’s light, sea, cliffs and ancient stones becoming central to her artistic practice.
Christie’s holds the world auction record for a Dame Barbara work, achieved in 2023 for The Family of Man: Ancestor II.
The work, from 1970, sold for £10.7 million. Dame Barbara is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century and is often credited with defining modern sculpture work.
She was born in January 1903 in Wakefield and studied at the Leeds School of Art.
She died aged 72 in an accidental fire at her studio in 1975. Wakefield’s art gallery is named after her. It is free for Wakefield District residents.
Sculpture with Colour (Eos) will be on view at Christie’s London until October 14 and again from October 17 to 21 as part of the Modern British and Irish Sales exhibition.
Christie’s modern British and Irish art evening sale will be held on October 21.