Barbara Hepworth dawn sculpture could fetch £8m at auction

A "pivotal masterwork" by Dame Barbara Hepworth inspired by the Cornish landscape is expected to sell for up to £8m at auction.

Hepworth carved Sculpture with Colour (Eos) in 1946 and named it after the Greek goddess of dawn.

Auction house Christie said it would be the highlight of a modern British and Irish art sale on 21 October and was estimated to sell between £5m and £8m.

The auction house holds the world auction record for a Hepworth piece, The Family of Man: Ancestor II, which sold for £10.7m in 2023.

Auctioneers said the Cornish landscape "strongly influenced" Hepworth, who was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and moved to Cornwall in 1939.

She moved to St Ives with her artist husband Ben Nicholson and their family at the outbreak of World War Two.

She lived and worked in Trewyn Studio, which is now the Tate Barbara Hepworth Museum, from 1949 until her death in a fire in 1975.

Auctioneers said the Cornish light, sea, cliffs and ancient stones "became central to her artistic practice" and influenced her technique of adding colour to her sculptures.

Alice Murray, Christie's head of modern British and Irish art, said the sculpture was carved "the year the world began again" after the war.

"Three hollows, painted blue, grey and white, catch the light like the first minutes of morning," she said.

The auction house said the sculpture was a "pivotal" piece by Hepworth, who became a leading light in the Cornish artistic community .

It said the post-war work "suggests emergence, awakening and renewal: a new world coming into being".

It is one of several pieces by Hepworth in the auction.

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