Hepworth's Eos Carves $8.3 Million Record at Christie's London

Barbara Hepworth's 1946 sculpture Sculpture with Colour (Eos) sold for £6.19 million ($8.3 million) at Christie's London on Wednesday, setting a new auction record for a unique work by the British artist.

The price landed inside the £5 million–£8 million estimate. All figures include buyer's premium. The sculpture is carved from a single block of pale Hopton Wood stone and takes its name from the Greek goddess of dawn.

Two more Hepworths followed it up the leaderboard:

• Figure (Sunion), 1960: £4.12 million ($5.5 million)
• Sea Form (Porthmeor), 1958: £1.54 million ($2.1 million)

Together, the three works accounted for more than half of the evening's £23.1 million ($30.8 million) total for the modern British and Irish art evening sale.

How strong was the wider sale?

Christie's put the total at 30 percent above the equivalent auction last year. That figure deserves a caveat: a single strong Hepworth grouping can lift a sale's average on its own, and the house has not broken down how much of the rise came from elsewhere in the catalogue.

Records fell regardless. Walter Sickert's The Horses of St Mark's, Venice (1901) sold for £550,400 ($734,000) after more than six minutes of bidding — a new auction record for the painter. Three more artists set personal bests:

• Gluck, Chromatic (1932): £499,200 ($665,000)
• Euan Uglow, Pyramid (1993–96): £793,600 ($1.06 million)
• Eduardo Paolozzi, 9XSR (1958): £204,800 ($273,000)

Why Eos matters

Hepworth made Sculpture with Colour (Eos) in 1946, seven years after moving to Cornwall, where the coastline, cliffs and ancient stones became a major influence on her work. The sculpture is also an example of her experiments with adding color to carved forms — a practice that became an important part of her career.

Earlier this year, the work appeared in "Hepworth in Colour" at London's Courtauld Gallery, an exhibition devoted to that less familiar side of her output. Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, in 1903, and spent much of her adult life in St Ives, Cornwall. She worked from Trewyn Studio from 1949 until her death in 1975; the studio now operates as the Barbara Hepworth Museum under Tate.

What does this change for the market?

The sale brings Christie's running total for its October 20th- and 21st-century auctions in London to £278.6 million ($371.4 million), with more sales scheduled in Paris this week. Those Paris results will show whether the 30 percent lift in London signals real momentum in the modern British category or a one-night Hepworth effect.