Rare Barbara Hepworth masterpiece 'Eos' is set to fetch up to £8m at Christie's London sale this month

From the Newshound archive · first published 12 October 2026 · last updated 13 October 2026.

'Sculpture with Colour (Eos)' by Barbara Hepworth, one of only three known coloured stone carvings she made in 1946, is estimated at up to £8m at Christie's.

Dame Barbara Hepworth's 'Sculpture with Colour (Eos)', carved from a single block of pale Hopton Wood stone in 1946, is set to lead Christie's Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale on 21 October, with a pre-sale estimate of £5 million to £8 million. Christie's considers it among the most complex and inventive sculptures Hepworth ever made; it is also one of only three coloured stone carvings she is known to have produced that year. The Wakefield-born sculptor had relocated to Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War, and the coastal landscape around Carbis Bay near St Ives left a clear mark on the work's organic, swelling form. Its three hand-carved hollows are painted in deep blue, pale grey and pure white.

The sculpture featured in a 1946 Lee Miller photograph of Hepworth for Vogue and was also included in the Courtauld Gallery's recent 'Hepworth in Colour' exhibition.

Christie's holds the world auction record for Hepworth, established in 2023 when 'The Family of Man: Ancestor II' sold for £10.7 million.

The title references the Greek goddess of dawn, and Christie's says the piece's form 'suggests emergence, awakening and renewal: a new world coming into being'.

yorkshireeveningpost.co.ukRare Barbara Hepworth sculpture could fetch up to £8m at auction artsandcollections.comChristie's to Sell Barbara Hepworth's Eos radionewshub.comBarbara Hepworth sculpture estimated to fetch up to £8m at auction The IndependentBarbara Hepworth sculpture could fetch £8m at auction Yorkshire PostDame Barbara Hepworth sculpture estimated to fetch up to £8m at auction

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