Barbara Hepworth’s Sculpture with Colour (Eos) Offered for Sale at Christie’s

Carved from a single piece of pale Hopton Wood stone, Sculpture with Colour (Eos) rises from its base as an organic ovoid form, balanced delicately on its narrowest point. The sculpture was created in 1946, a pivotal year for Hepworth, in which she reached new levels of experimentation and development in her work, with colour emerging as an integral element of her sculptural language. One of just three known stone sculptures from 1946 to feature the application of painted colour to its form, the piece is among the most complex and inventive works Hepworth created in this vein. Sculpture with Colour (Eos) also featured in a photograph Lee Miller took of the artist in her studio for Vogue shortly after its completion, illustrating its importance as a key example of her most recent work.

The sculpture powerfully illustrates Hepworth's long-held commitment to 'truth to materials' and direct carving – responding to the essential character of her chosen materials, she produced unique works that came solely from tools she wielded in her own two hands.  “I have always preferred direct carving to modelling,” the artist explained, “because I like the resistance of the hard material and feel happier working that way. Carving is more adapted to the expression of the accumulative idea of experience and clay to the visual attitude. An idea for carving must be clearly formed before starting and sustained during the long process of working… harmony comes with the discovery of the most direct way of carving each material according to its nature.”

The landscape of Cornwall also strongly influenced Hepworth's sculpture through this period. She had moved from London to St Ives in Cornwall with the artist Ben Nicholson and their young family in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War and lived in Carbis Bay from 1942 to 1949. The bright Cornish light, sea, cliffs, and ancient stones became central to her artistic practice, and influenced the evolution of her thoughts on adding colour to her sculptures. She believed that light and space were as integral to a finished work as materials such as stone and wood, an effect which could be accentuated and enhanced by the addition of particular hues of paint to certain features.

Across the surface of Sculpture with Colour (Eos), three delicately shaped hollows have been accentuated with paint – ranging from deep, rich blue, to a subtle pale grey and an off-white. Together, these tones evoke the luminous hues of daybreak, while the vibrant blue also calls to mind the depths of the ocean, the boundless sky and the infinite reaches of the cosmos. The choice of colours also connects to the subtitle Hepworth granted the sculpture, Eos, which invokes the ancient Greek goddess of dawn, who symbolised the start of a new day and was associated with light, renewal, and rebirth. In this context, the sculpture's swelling, organic form may suggest similar themes of emergence, awakening, and renewal: the sense of a new world gradually coming into being.

Formerly in the collection of philanthropists David and Geraldine Pincus, Sculpture with Colour (Eos) has an exceptional exhibition history, having been included in a number of important shows dedicated to Hepworth's art, from the artist's first solo-show following the Second World War, held at the Lefevre Gallery in London in 1946, to the seminal retrospectives of her work at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1954 and the Tate in 1968, as well as the celebrations of the artist's centenary in 2003 in her adopted home of St. Ives. It most recently featured in the exhibition Hepworth in Colour at The Courtauld Gallery, London, which took place between June and September 2026 and celebrated the artist's dynamic use of colour.

Main Image: Dame Barbara Hepworth, Sculpture with Colour (Eos), carved and painted in 1946. Estimate: £5,000,000-8,000,000 Courtesy Christie's