Dame Barbara Hepworth

The Hepworth Estate, and thence by descent
Acquired by a Private Collector through the New Art Centre, Salisbury, 2003

London, Marlborough Galleries, Recent Acquisitions, July - August 1967, cat. no.9 (another cast);
London, Tate, Barbara Hepworth, 3rd April - 19th May 1968, cat. no.179 (as Sphere with Inside and Outisde Colour) (another cast);
London, Marlborough Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, February - March 1970, cat. no.9 (another cast);
New York, Marlborough Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, Carvings and Bronzes, 5th May - 29th June 1979, cat. no.29, illustrated;
Liverpool, Tate, Barbara Hepworth, A Retrospective, 14th September - 4th December 1994, cat. no.75 (another cast), illustrated, with tour to Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Alan Bowness (ed.), The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-69, Lund Humphries, London, 1971, cat. no.445, p.45;
A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, Thames & Hudson, London, 1987, p.189, illustrated pl.169 (another cast); 
Alan Wilkinson, 'Within the Landscape,' published to coincide with the exhibition, Graham Murrell: Twelve Months, 12th September - 14th November 2004, New Art Centre, Sculpture Park & Gallery, illustrated pl.22.

The work is slightly loose on the wooden base, but is otherwise structurally sound. There is minor surface dirt and dust, with very minor scratches to the surface of the sculpture, including a very small scratch to the lower outside of the red and black plate, and a very small scratch to the interior of the light blue plate. This excepting the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Housed on a black-painted wooden base, with minor scuffs in isolated places. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"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.
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We are grateful to Dr. Sophie Bowness for her kind assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for present work, which will feature in her forthcoming revised catalogue raisonné of the Artist's sculpture as catalogue number BH445.

The present work, conceived in 1967, is the maquette for the much larger Sphere with Inside and Outside Colour (BH444) - the only version of which subsequently rusted and was destroyed. However, in 1972 Hepworth was invited by Sam Wanamaker to create a suitable work for the Globe Playhouse Trust and based her design on Sphere with Inside and Outside Colour, naming the 1972 work  Sphere (BH561). The first cast from Sphere is currently on display at the Globe Theatre, London.

Sphere with Inside and Outside Colour is one of the few works in Hepworth's ouevre that is constructed, rather than carved, and in which she uses moving elements to explore her life-long concern of the relationship between the inside and outside of forms. The spaces between the elements can be changed by the viewer, altering the internal space of the sphere and the external form of the sculpture. There are possible signs in this work of the earlier influences of her friends Naum Gabo (in the construction) and Piet Mondrian (in the deployment of colour). The sculpture bares a similarity to the prototype for Construction (Crucifixion) (BH 443, Hepworth, Wakefield) created a couple of years later in 1966-1967 in the use of aluminium and the colour scheme employed.

`There is an inside and an outside to every form. When they are in special accord ... then I am most drawn to the effect of light. Every shadow cast by the sun from an ever-varying angle reveals the harmony of the inside to outside. Light gives full play to our tactile perceptions through the experience of our eyes, and the vitality of forms is revealed by the interplay between space and volume’ (The Artist, quoted in Herbert Read, Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, 1952, first chapter, unpaginated).