Barbara Hepworth valuation
Put the hole through the middle of the sculpture, and made St Ives a centre of European modernism.
Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield in 1903, studied at Leeds alongside Henry Moore and then at the Royal College, and in 1931 pierced a sculpture straight through — a hole that opened up the form and became one of the defining moves of twentieth-century sculpture. She moved to St Ives at the outbreak of war with Ben Nicholson and their triplets, and stayed for the rest of her life, working in wood, stone and, from the mid-1950s, bronze. Single Form stands outside the United Nations in New York. She died in a fire at her studio in 1975.
The direct carvings in wood and stone are unique and are the top of the market by a wide margin; the bronzes are editioned, typically in sevens or nines, and cast number, foundry, lifetime versus posthumous casting and the condition of the patina are the substance of a valuation. Many bronzes are painted or have strung interiors, and replaced strings are common and should be disclosed. The Hepworth estate and the catalogue raisonne are the references. Drawings, particularly the hospital operating-theatre series of the late 1940s, are a distinct and strong market.
Hepworth made almost all her prints in a burst of work in the last years of her life, between 1969 and 1971: screenprints such as the Opposing Forms set, printed at Kelpra Studio in London, and lithographs including the Aegean Suite, finished at the Curwen Studio in 1971. They are signed and numbered in pencil, in editions that were usually modest, and they are the accessible end of her market.
The usual faults are those of the period: colours faded on screenprints that have hung in sunlight, staining from acidic mounts, and creases from handling. Exhibition posters from St Ives and London galleries are common and can look similar once framed, so the numbering, the paper and the printer's details are worth checking against the published records.
Selling a work
We represent the seller rather than the auction house: comparing houses and sale dates, negotiating the seller's terms, and keeping the paperwork and remittance in your name. What sets the value of a Barbara Hepworth sets out what we look at first.
Art movements
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- Keith Haring
- L. S. Lowry
- Bridget Riley
- Grayson Perry
- Takashi Murakami
- David Shrigley
- Jack Vettriano
- Beryl Cook
- Henry Moore
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Lucian Freud
- Peter Blake
- Henri Matisse
- Salvador Dali
- Martin Parr
- Mr Brainwash
- Patrick Caulfield
- Harland Miller
- Marc Chagall
