Hepworth piece fetches more than £6m at auction

A "defining masterwork" by Dame Barbara Hepworth has fetched£6.19m at auction.

Sculpture with Colour (Eos) was expected to sell for between £5m and £8m at the Christie's auction house modern British and Irish art sale on Wednesday.

Inspired by the Cornish landscape, Hepworth created the artwork in 1946, naming it after the Greek goddess of dawn.

Pippa Jacomb, head of the evening sale at Christie's said the price "set a record for a unique work," with the top three highest-selling prices of the night all for works by Hepworth.

They included Hepworth's 1960 Figure (Sunion), which sold for £4,116,000 and her 1958 Sea Form (Porthmeor), which fetched £1,536,000.

Jacomb said the top three sales were "fitting recognition for one of the most important artists of the 20th Century".

Hepworth, who was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and moved to Cornwall in 1939, carved Sculpture with Colour from a single piece of pale Hopton Wood stone.

She lived and worked in Trewyn Studio, now the Tate Barbara Hepworth Museum, from 1949 until her death in a fire in 1975.

Auctioneers said the Cornish light, sea, cliffs and ancient stones "became central to her artistic practice" and influenced the artist's technique of adding colour to her sculptures.

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.