Dame Barbara Hepworth

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Private Collection, purchased from the above 1972
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 31st March 1987, lot 71 (sold for £95,000 hammer, a world auction record for the artist at that time)
Private Collection, Japan, whence purchased by the previous owner

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Barbara Hepworth: The Family of Man - Nine Bronzes & Recent Carvings, April - May 1972, no21, illustrated in colour on front cover and p.60, also illustrated p.5 twice and p.67 twice;
New York, Pace Wildenstein Gallery, Barbara Hepworth: Stone Sculpture, 10 February - 1 March 2001, no.13, illustrated in colour.

A.M.Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, Thames & Hudson, London 1987 (revised edition), p.195, pl.174, illustrated;
Penelope Curtis & Alan G.Wilkinson, Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective, Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1994, p.114, illustrated, p.116;
Donald Kuspit, 'PaceWildenstein: Barbara Hepworth Review', in ArtForum, Summer 2001.

Please contact the department for a copy of the external condition report prepared for this lot by Plowden & Smith.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In his introduction to an exhibition of Hepworth's recent work at Marlborough Fine Art in 1972, A.M.Hammacher noted how the sculptor's later work felt simultaneously familiar and yet 'new and strange'. This apparently simple statement perhaps shows how difficult an experienced commentator on her work found it at the time to pinpoint the exact qualities of the late carvings that have proved to be so appealing to collectors over the past decades.

The vocabulary of these carvings seems to be very reminiscent of the sculptures of the 1930s, yet on closer inspection the overall sense of these sculptures is very different. The strong influence of the 'modernist' manner of the earlier period has been much altered by the passing years and experiences to create a body of carvings, roughly dating from the last decade of her life, that explore the old concerns anew and bring a freshness and vitality rarely seen in the twilight of a career.

In a statement in 1970,

'I'm not exactly the sculpture in the landscape any more. I think of the works as objects which rise out of the land of the sea, mysteriously. You can't make a sculpture without it being a thing - a creature, a figure, a fetish...any stone standing in the hills here is a figure, but you have to go further than that. What figure? And which countenance? ... I like to dream of things rising from the ground - it would be marvellous to walk in the woods and suddenly come across such things or to meet a reclining form.'    (Alan Bowness (ed.), The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth 1960-69, Lund Humphries 1971, p.13)

The sculptor herself hints at how this change may have come about, and further statements offer a sense of seeking to imbue her sculpture with a spiritual and human element. Whilst this could easily become introspective, the combination with her willingness to seek new challenges could well have been the source of the 'new and strange' noted by Hammacher. Indeed, Three Part Vertical is a piece that combines just these qualities. In its proportions and scale, this piece has a markedly human feel, and it marks the completion of a group of works that would be a crowning achievement of her final years, The Family of Man.

In this series of nine large-scale bronzes, intended to function as both single forms and as a group (of the six casts of each piece, two complete sets were intended to remain together as a single unit), the figures are formed by a piling-up of simple abstract forms on top of each other. Hepworth had employed this technique both in works of the 1930s, such as Two Forms, 1938 (Private Collection) and Project (Monument to the Spanish War), 1938-9 (Destroyed), and in some carving of the 1960's, but in virtually all these works, the forms have a similarity of surface and handling. In the Family of Man, differences in the handling of each component starts to become clear, but nowhere else in her oeuvre do we see the complete contrast between the surface and character of the elements that is present in Three Part Vertical. The base section appears almost in a rough uncarved state, yet the careful introduction of deep gouged piercings in the stone enlivens the surface. The mid-section is formed of a monumental upright form, a single hole reaching through the stone. The final section is the most abstract component, a reclining polished egg-shaped form that, Brancusi-like, crowns the composition. Unlike The Family of Man pieces, the contrast between the forms and the oblique stance of the whole lends a dynamism to the work that does indeed give the sculpture a feeling that not only might one have found the piece fully formed without the hand of a creator, but that there is an underlying human element, like that of Lot's Wife turned to a pillar of salt.

'In Three Part Vertical Hepworth completely abandoned all notions of stylistic and formal consistency that had prevailed in her multi-part compositions since the 1930s, and created a composite image that is both tough and rugged, elegant and pure. (Alan Wilkinson, 'Cornwall and the Sculpture of Landscape: 1939-1975', in Penelope Curtis and Alan Wilkinson, op.cit.p114)

Her works are invariably more than the sum of their often very disparate parts, as the intricate Three Part Vertical, 1971, makes clear. The ridged, comparatively raw lower section, the polished torso with its grand hole, and the large oval on top with its smooth "face" synthesize into a Brancusi-esque totemic figure even as they maintain their radical difference. (Donald Kuspit, 'PaceWildenstein: Barbara Hepworth Review', in ArtForum, Summer 2001).