Christie's Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale made £17.3 million on King Street, led by Barbara Hepworth's The Family of Man (Figure 9, The Bride).
A Barbara Hepworth bronze led Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale at Christie’s King Street in St James’s on Wednesday 22 October 2025. The 32-lot sale made £17.3 million.
The Family of Man is a series of nine bronze figures that Hepworth made in the early 1970s. One set stands at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and another at the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in Purchase, New York.
Figure 9, The Bride, sold for £3.9 million, the highest price for a Modern British and Irish work at a London auction that year so far. Her Vertical Wood Form of 1968 made £1.4 million.
Christie’s was founded in 1766 by James Christie and moved to King Street in 1823. The sale ran in Frieze week and made 20 per cent more than a year earlier, though it fell short of its high estimate of £22.6 million.
The sell-through was 81 per cent by lot and 90 per cent by value. Stanley Spencer’s The Meeting of 1933 also made £1.4 million, and Bridget Riley’s Dendera made £1.2 million.
L.S. Lowry’s Bourton-on-the-Water, a rare Cotswolds view of 1947, sold at more than 60 per cent above its high estimate.