Barbara Hepworth Museum

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Sphere with Inner Form at the Barbara Hepworth Museum, with Two Forms (Divided Circle) behind Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, St Ives - geograph.org.uk - 11244.jpg
Sphere with Inner Form at the Barbara Hepworth Museum, with Two Forms (Divided Circle) behind

The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall preserves the 20th-century sculptor Barbara Hepworth's studio and garden much as they were when she lived and worked there. She purchased the site in 1949 and lived and worked there for 26 years until her death in a fire on the premises in 1975.

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History

Hepworth's workshop left virtually untouched Hepworth workshop.jpg
Hepworth's workshop left virtually untouched

The studio, known as Trewyn Studio, was purchased by Barbara Hepworth in September 1949. [1] Princess Anne visited Hepworth at her studio during her visit to St Ives in 1972. [2]

Her living room is furnished as she left it, while the workshop remains full of her tools and equipment, materials, and part-worked pieces. The museum was opened by her family in 1976, after Barbara had left instructions to this effect in her will. It is the largest collection of her works that are on permanent display. [1]

The sculptures featured at the museum (mainly in the secluded garden) were some of her favourites. Her workshop also includes a queue of uncut stones that one visitor has described as "still waiting for their moment in the shadow of her workshop". In 1950 she acquired two huge blocks of Galway limestone which she carved into her Festival of Britain commission, the Contrapuntal Forms. A set of photographs in the museum shows the progress of this project. Wood carving was done in an upstairs room, and the bronze statues she started casting in 1956 had their origins in the plaster prototypes she worked on in the upper of the two outside studios. [1]

She was helped in the creation of the garden by her friend, the South African-born composer Priaulx Rainier.

Barbara Hepworth died in a fire at this site in 1975, which was caused by one of her cigarettes making some package burn, when she was aged 72.

The family passed the museum to the Tate gallery in 1980 and they still manage it.

Books

Close up of Hepworth's tools, in the workshop Hepworth tools.jpg
Close up of Hepworth's tools, in the workshop

See also

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<i>Figure for Landscape</i> Sculpture by Barbara Hepworth

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<i>Two Forms (Divided Circle)</i> Sculpture by Barbara Hepworth

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<i>Sphere with Inner Form</i>

Sphere with Inner Form is a bronze sculpture by English artist Barbara Hepworth, with six castings made in 1963 and two more 1965. It is sometimes interpreted as a child in a pregnant woman's womb, or as a metaphor for the creation of a sculpture.

<i>Winged Figure</i> Sculpture by Barbara Hepworth

Winged Figure is a 1963 sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. One of Hepworth's best known works, it has been displayed in London since April 1963, on Holles Street near the junction with Oxford Street, mounted on the south-east side of the John Lewis department store. It is estimated that the sculpture is seen by approximately 200 million people each year.

<i>Single Form</i> Series of sculptures by Barbara Hepworth

Single Form is a monumental bronze sculpture by the British artist Barbara Hepworth. It is her largest work, and one of her most prominent public commissions, displayed since 1964 in a circular water feature that forms a traffic island at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, outside the United Nations Secretariat Building and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. It is also the largest artwork cast by the Morris Singer foundry.

Meridian is a bronze sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. It is an early example of her public commissions, commissioned for State House, a new 16-storey office block constructed at 66–71 High Holborn, London, in the early 1960s. The sculpture was made in 1958–59, and erected in 1960. When the building was demolished in 1992, the sculpture was sold and moved to the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in Purchase, New York.

<i>Four-Square</i> (Walk Through) Bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth

Four-Square is a 4.3 metres (14 ft) high bronze sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. It was cast in 1966 in an edition of 3+1. The four casts are displayed at the Barbara Hepworth Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Mayo Clinic.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palais de Danse, St Ives</span> Studio and former dance hall in St Ives, Cornwall

The Palais de Danse is a former cinema, dance hall, ballet school and auction house in St Ives, Cornwall which was a studio for sculptor and artist Barbara Hepworth from 1961 until her death in 1975. After her death, the Palais was kept by her family until it was donated to Tate in 2015. In 2020, Historic England designated it a Grade II listed building.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Barbara Hepworth: St Ives". Hepworth Estate. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  2. "Ignoring the Rain the Princess Saves St. Ives' Big Day". St Ives Times & Echo . No. 3097. 12 May 1972. p. 4. But defying the recurring showers, Princess Anne decided to walk - from the Guildhall to Dame Barbara Hepworth's studio in Barnoon, from Barnoon to the lifeboat slipway, and from the slipway to Porthmeor Beach.

50°12′49″N5°28′53″W / 50.21361°N 5.48139°W / 50.21361; -5.48139