Barbara Hepworth sculpture could fetch £6m at auction

Dame Barbara Hepworth’s Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red, is expected to sell for between £2.2m and £3.2m (James Manning/PA)

An oval-shaped sculpture by Dame Barbara Hepworth is up for sale with a multimillion-pound price tag.

The piece, Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red, created in March 1944, is part of Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale.

The auction house estimates it will fetch between £2.2 million and £3.2 million.

Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art sale — Barbara Hepworth’s brass sculpture Maquette for Winged Figure, 1957 (Barbara Hepworth/PA)

Other works by the Wakefield-born artist going under the hammer are the Landscape Sculpture, which looks like a stringed instrument, the brass sculpture Maquette For Winged Figure, and an oil and pencil work called Atlantic Form, Blue.

They are being sold at guide prices ranging from £100,000 to £1 million.

At a previous sale at Christie’s in New York in 2021, the late sculptor’s work Parent II fetched 7.1 million US dollars (£6.07 million).

Also up for sale is Lynn Chadwick’s metallic sculpture, Sitting Couple On Bench, which was conceived in 1990 and cast in 2001, and is estimated to go for between £1.2 million and £1.8 million.

Two Watchers V Second Version, another work by Londoner Chadwick, who is known for his sitting and standing figures, could also fetch £1.2 million to £1.8 million.

Other big-ticket items include the previously announced LS Lowry painting Sunday Afternoon, which is expected to fetch between £4 million and £6 million and is on display for the first in 57 years.

The Lancashire artist’s Early Morning is up for between £800,000 amd £1.2 million, while Street Scene With Old Church Tower from 1964 and People Standing About from 1972 both have estimates of £400,000 to £600,000.

The day sale at Christie’s is also offering Lowry’s 1952 work Street Scene and Dame Barbara’s Three Curves With Strings, and Henry Moore’s Mother And Child On Ladderback Rocking Chair are being sold at prices ranging from £80,000 to £250,000.

Head by Moore, a Yorkshire contemporary of Dame Barbara and often seen as her biggest rival, is expected to fetch between £800,000 and £1.2 million at the evening sale.

– Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale is on Wednesday March 20 while the Day Sale takes place on Thursday March 21.