"Quickies" 18 - Barbara Hepworth
- Gethin Thomas
- Nov 15, 2025
- 2 min read
St Ives is synonymous with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth and vice versa. While St Ives has a long history and connection with 20th century art and artists, arguably its most famous resident artist was Barbara Hepworth. Her work is iconic of her era and her former home and studio form a beautiful museum in the heart of this old fishing village.
Her story surely played a major part in the world famous Tate Gallery's decision to open a subsidiary regional gallery right here.
My own first encounter with her work was in my local shopping centre in Wolverhampton which had installed one of her sculptures back in 1968. Barbara Hepworth created Rock Form in 1964. It is one of 6 similar bronze castings - the others are held in the at Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens, Truro, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Association for Public Art in Philadelphia and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.
Her museum includes all of her former home including the greenhouse, garden and studio. It is a walled garden hidden away in the middle of the town. Barbara Hepworth first came to live in Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson and their young family at the outbreak of war in 1939. She lived and worked in Trewyn Studio – now the Barbara Hepworth Museum – from 1949 until her death in 1975.
'Finding Trewyn Studio was a sort of magic’, wrote Hepworth. ‘Here was a studio, a yard and garden where I could work in open air and space'.
The workshop remains full of her tools and equipment, materials, and part-worked pieces.
Most of the bronzes are in the positions in which the artist herself placed them. The garden itself was laid out by Barbara Hepworth with help from a friend, the composer Priaulx Rainier.
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. 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.
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".
Princess Anne visited Hepworth at her studio during her visit to St Ives in 1972. The family passed the museum to the Tate gallery in 1980 and they still manage it.
The greenhouse above was part of the acquisition Hepworth made in 1965 from her neighbour the sculptor John Milne. This included the strip of land at the top of the garden; and at the end of her life, Milne sold another piece of land where Hepworth placed Conversation with Magic Stones, her final monumental, multi-part bronze (1973).
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.
Comments