Christie's Offers Hepworth Sculpture From 1948 Vogue Photo

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, featured in a 1948 photograph by Lee Miller for American Vogue, will be presented at Christie's modern British and Irish art evening sale in London on October 21. The mid-career work, Sculpture with Colour (Eos), carries an estimated value of £5 million–£8 million (equivalent to $6.6 million–$10.5 million ).

Hepworth, a renowned British modernist sculptor, carved Sculpture with Colour (Eos) in 1946 from a single piece of Hopton Wood stone, a type of limestone. The egg-shaped sculpture, approximately two feet tall, rests on a short platform. It features three hollowed-out areas painted pale gray, off-white, and deep blue. According to a statement from Christie's, these colors allude to“the depths of the ocean, the boundless sky and the infinite reaches of the cosmos.” This piece is an early example of Hepworth's use of color in her work.

The 1948 photograph by Miller, a friend of Hepworth's, captures the artist at her studio in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, where she had moved with her family in 1939 before World War II. The black-and-white image shows Hepworth seated with her arms and legs crossed, with a tea set in the foreground and a cat on a couch. Sculpture with Colour (Eos) is visible on a table to the right. The sculpture's consignor acquired the piece at Christie's in 2016 for $5.4 million, surpassing its estimate of $1.2 million–$1.8 million. It came from the estate of American philanthropists David and Geraldine Pincus, who purchased it from Martha Jackson Gallery in 1962.

Alice Murray, head of modern British and Irish art at Christie's London, highlighted the sculpture's long-standing significance, stating,“Sculpture with Colour (Eos) has been at the heart of Hepworth's story for 80 years.” Murray noted its inclusion in Hepworth's first postwar solo gallery exhibition in 1946 and the recent“Hepworth in Colour” show at the Courtauld in London this summer.

We previously reported:

Piet Mondrian's Composition III and Wassily Kandinsky's Das bunte Leben will lead Christie's October 14 sale, while Sotheby's offers Roman sculptures.

A 1948 painting by Winston Churchill, Amaryllis Lily, originally gifted to his daughter, will be auctioned at Christie's on October 21 for an estimated

A small marble sculpture found at a U.K. salvage yard is expected to fetch £10,000 at auction after being identified as a work by Pietro Bracci.

Source: ARTnews

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