# Another Hepworth Orpheus Comes to Auction Following £952,900 Bonhams Sale Canonical article: https://arthistory.news/news/another-hepworth-orpheus-comes-to-auction-following-952-900-bonhams-sale-05795a55-5064-4045-854c-97274ebca3d6 By ArtHistory.News Published: 2026-10-06T06:33:38.470Z Barbara Hepworth’s Orpheus \(Maquette I\) returns to the auction market at Christie’s this October, offering a fresh test of demand for one of the sculptor’s most distinctive works of the 1950s. Christie’s will offer an example of Barbara Hepworth’s Orpheus \(Maquette I\) in its Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale in London on 21 October. Conceived in 1956, the sculpture belongs to a small edition of eight and comes from one of the most inventive periods of Hepworth’s career, when she began moving away from the predominantly carved forms of her earlier work and experimenting with sheet metal, string and a radically more open treatment of space. The appearance is particularly interesting because another example from the same edition came to auction at Bonhams in London in June 2025. That sculpture, number 3 of eight, was estimated at £400,000-£600,000 but attracted strong international bidding and eventually sold for £952,900 including premium. It was the top lot of Bonhams’ Modern British and Irish Art sale. There is an even stronger earlier benchmark. In July 2020, Sotheby’s offered number 8 from the edition with an estimate of £250,000-£350,000. Following competition between bidders, it realised £1,275,000, almost four times the upper estimate. Those results make the Christie’s appearance a particularly useful measure of the present Hepworth market. Orpheus was conceived at an important transitional point in Hepworth’s practice. During 1956 she began working extensively in brass and copper sheet, materials which allowed her to abandon the weight and solidity inherent in carving and instead construct forms that could seemingly draw themselves through space. The curving sheets of brass in Orpheus are connected by taut strings which describe complex parabolic surfaces while leaving much of the sculpture physically empty. The series originated in a commission from the electronics company Mullard for its London headquarters. The resulting large sculpture, Theme on Electronics \(Orpheus\), was designed to rotate mechanically. Hepworth subsequently developed the idea into a group of smaller Orpheus sculptures, including Orpheus \(Maquette I\), produced in an edition of eight. The title itself draws on the Greek myth of Orpheus, the legendary musician whose lyre could charm the natural world. Hepworth had travelled to Greece and the Aegean in 1954 and classical names increasingly entered her vocabulary afterwards. In Orpheus, the reference is particularly apt: the strings transform the sculpture into something resembling both an abstracted lyre and a pair of wings caught at the moment of opening. Hepworth later recalled the pleasure she found in this new material language, describing forms that seemed closer to the lightness and flight of birds than to the more earthbound associations of rocks and the human figure. The change was significant. Rather than carving a volume and piercing it to create space, Hepworth could now make space itself one of the principal materials of the sculpture. Individual examples of Orpheus \(Maquette I\) are not entirely identical. The brass was shaped by hand through a process of cold rolling rather than mechanically formed, while the stringing was also individually applied. Small variations in curvature, patination and tension therefore give each work its own character despite belonging to an edition. With the £1.275 million Sotheby’s result of 2020 followed by the £952,900 Bonhams sale in 2025, Orpheus \(Maquette I\) has established itself as one of the most commercially sought-after of Hepworth’s smaller 1950s constructions. Christie’s sale on 21 October now provides another opportunity to see how collectors value this pivotal moment in her development. ## Illustrations DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH \(1903-1975\) Orpheus \(Maquette 1\) Christie’s [Image source](). ## Sources - [ArtHistory.News editor: ArtHistory.News editor]() ## Related records - [Barbara Hepworth]() Please cite the canonical article URL above. Image credits and reproduction rights remain with their respective holders.