Conceived and cast in bronze in 1966, Elegy III is a remarkable example of Hepworth’s mature body of work, bringing together, in a characteristically harmonic and intuitive manner, the most essential tropes of the artist’s œuvre.

Comprised of an elongated ovoid shape with three concave hollows, the present work reflects Hepworth’s long-standing fascination with the oval shape. Back in 1946, the artist spoke about her evolving interest in the following way: ‘I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. My first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise, and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime’ (quoted in Eleanor Clayton, Barbara Hepworth. Art & Life, London, 2021, p. 109).

The present work was executed in 1966, by which point Hepworth had achieved world-wide recognition and commercial success. The decade saw her execute a number of important commissions that further propelled her international fame, including Single Form for the United Nations’ headquarters in New York (1964) and Winged Figure for the John Lewis flagship store in Oxford Street (1963). A year before the present work was executed, she was created Dame Commander of the British Empire.

The financial stability also allowed Hepworth to move in 1961 to a substantially larger studio, Palais de Dance, a former dance hall and cinema in St Ives. The space provided her with a new degree of artistic freedom and a possibility to create on a large scale, without limitations, finally being able to fully consider the ways in which the viewers could interact with her work. In 1968 Hepworth commented on the importance of physical engagement with sculpture in the following way: ‘There’s no fixed point for a sculpture, there’s no fixed point at which you can see it, there’s no fixed point of light in which you can experience it, because it’s ever-changing and it’s a sensation which cannot be replaced’ (quoted in Eleanor Clayton, Barbara Hepworth. Art & Life, London, 2021, p. 233). Elegy III, with its fluid shape, the striking colour contrast between the inner and outer forms, and the hollow shapes that morph and transform as they let the natural elements in epitomises the transient, yet immensely powerful experience of engaging with a sculptural work of art within a landscape that Hepworth referred to.

The focus on viewer interaction, always crucial for Hepworth, together with a growing international success that demanded her sculptures were more durable and resistant to changing environmental conditions, resulted in the artist’s engagement during this period – for the first time in thirty years – with the bronze medium. As Alan G. Wilkinson writes, ‘Working towards bronze radically altered the scope of Hepworth’s sculpture in a number of ways. Stylistically she was able to create much more open, linear, transparent forms that would have been impossible to realise in stone or wood. […] now that she had the space, the time and the money, she was able to work on a much larger scale. Having her sculpture cast in bronze in limited editions meant that her work reached a much larger audience, as many more sculptures were available for museums and private collectors’ (Exh. Cat., Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario and Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective, 1994, p. 102).

The present work is based on a unique elmwood carving, Hollow Form with White, created in 1965 and held in the Tate collection (fig. 2). The plaster for the present work was conceived in the summer of 1966 at the Morris Singer Foundry, with whom Hepworth had closely collaborated with since 1959, and cast in bronze in the edition of six plus one artist’s proof. The title Elegy III connects the work to a pair of homonymous wood carvings from 1945 (fig. 3) and 1946 respectively, as well as a work from 1952, Head (Elegy) (fig. 4). In a 1998 Tate catalogue entry curator Chris Stephens notes that, ‘In the recovery of the earlier title one might see a melancholic reiteration in 1966 of Hepworth's belief in the affirmation of abstract form in contrast to the destruction of war’ (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hepworth-hollow-form-with-white-t00960, accessed 28 May 2023). In fact, the very same year the present work was conceived and cast, Hepworth remarked: ‘Sculpture is to me an affirmative statement of our will to live: whether it be small, to rest in the hand; or larger, to be embraced; or larger still, to force us to move around it and establish our rhythm of life’ (quoted in E. Clayton, Barbara Hepworth. Art & Life, London, 2021, p. 234).

The plaster for the present work, held at Hepworth Wakefield, is unique among the surviving examples, since in its elaborate treatment it imitates not a wooden carving, as many of Hepworth’s plasters do, but a bronze sculpture (figs. 5 and 6). This is because in this particular instance, the plaster not only served as the basis for the casting of the bronze editions, but was exhibited in its own right as part of Hepworth's Freedom for St Ives exhibition held in the summer 1968 (which is when, according to Sophie Bowness, it was most likely painted). As Bowness notes with regards to the bronze edition, ‘For the patination, Hepworth asked for a golden exterior and “as blue as Gordon Duffle [Morris Signer’s patinator] can get it inside” (21 January 1967 to Gibbard)’ (S. Bowness, Barbara Hepworth, The Plasters. The Gift to Wakefield, Farnham, 2015, p. 146).

Several editions of the present work are held in important institutional collections, including the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo and the Franklin Murphy D. Sculpture Garden at the University of California, Los Angeles, while one further edition was, until recently, in the eminent collection of the late American business magnate Paul G. Allen (figs. 7-9).