Barbara Hepworth's 'Eos' Sells for £6.19m at Christie's London
A carved and painted stone sculpture from 1946, made in Cornwall after the war, has set a new mark for the artist.
Dame Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture with Colour (Eos), carved in 1946, sold for £6.19m at Christie's Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London on Wednesday 21 October 2026, against an estimate of £5m to £8m. Christie's said the price set a record for a unique work by Hepworth.
The result
On Wednesday 21 October 2026, Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture with Colour (Eos) sold for £6.19m at Christie's Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London. It had been estimated at £5m to £8m. Pippa Jacomb, who leads the evening sale at Christie's, said the price "set a record for a unique work" by the artist, as reported by the BBC.
It was a Hepworth night. According to Christie's, her work took the top three prices of the sale, with Figure (Sunion), 1960, and Sea Form (Porthmeor), 1958, in second and third place.
The sculpture
Eos is named after the Greek goddess of the dawn. Hepworth carved it in 1946 from a single block of pale Hopton Wood stone and painted the hollowed interior, a technique she used only rarely. It is one of a small group of coloured carvings she made in Cornwall in the years after the Second World War, when the light, sea and cliffs around St Ives were shaping her work. Hepworth had moved to Cornwall in 1939; her later home and studio, Trewyn, is now the Barbara Hepworth Museum run by Tate.
Why a unique carving matters
Much of Hepworth's later work was cast in bronze in editions, often of six or more. A carving like Eos exists only once: the artist's own hand on the stone, with no other version. For any sculpture, the same questions shape interest: is it unique or one of an edition, when was it made, has it been exhibited or published, and what is its condition?
The same thinking applies to the decorative bronzes and objects we handle every week: the maker, the date, whether a piece is an original or a later cast, and how much of its original surface survives.
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- BBC News (Cornwall), "Hepworth piece fetches more than £6m at auction", 22 Oct 2026 (syndicated)
- Christie's, Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale, London, 21 October 2026
- Artdaily, "Dame Barbara Hepworth's defining masterwork Sculpture with Colour (Eos) to lead sale at Christie's"
Prices as reported by the BBC and Christie's. Mozeris Fine Antiques is not connected with Christie's. No auction-house images are used; the photograph shows a piece from our own stock.
