Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth was one of the three major sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century who lived and worked in England. Hepworth was married to Ben Nicholson, her work was complementary to his in many ways. She was a very limited sculptor but had some very great achievements. She was born in 1903, the oldest of four children. Her closeness to her father and his work familiarized her with technical drawings. At the age of sixteen she won a scholarship to the Leeds School of Art, where Henry Moore was studying. In 1924 she was a finalist for the Prix de Rome and runner up to John Skeaping, her future husband. Despite her failure to win the prize, a grant from the West Riding enabled her to live and travel in Italy for a year. She and Skeaping travelled to Florence together, and married in the Palazzo Vecchio. In Rome she received a thorough training in carving, which was not then taught at the Royal College since sculpture was considered to be mainly a matter of modeling.

Hepworth had two crucial insights while in Italy. The first was the experience of light missing from her youth in the north; the second that marble changed color under different people's hands. This, she said, made her ”decide immediately that it was not dominance which one had to obtain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all a kind of coordination between head and hand.”

In 1926, she and Skeaping held a joint exhibition in their own studio in St John's Wood. In 1929 her son Paul was born. During this early period in London Hepworth was in frequent contact with Henry Moore, with whom she had been a student, both at Leeds and at the Royal College, and in 1930 and 1931 the two sculptors formed part of a group holidaying on the Norfolk coast. In 1931 she and Ben Nicholson became close and started living together. Eventually they got married.

Hepworth and Nicholson lived in Hampstead and were at the center of a small group of avant garde artists...