YP Letters: Hepworth's gifts will be lost to school and city

Barbara Hepworth's Forms in Movement (Galliard) and Quiet Form are to be sold at auction at Sotheby's in June to raise funds for Wakefield Girls' High School, to the dismay of former students.

I WAS a pupil at Wakefield Girls’ High School in the days when it was a direct grant school and Margaret Knott was the headmistress. Barbara Hepworth offered us the sculpture Galliard at half price, and the school was not in a position to find the money out of its own funds, so we had to raise the purchase price ourselves.

All senior school pupils were given a small amount of money and asked to increase it X-fold. In addition, we held fundraising events, run by pupils and staff, including a spring fair. Eventually we had raised sufficient money to pay our share, and we were so proud and happy to see the beautiful Galliard in our school. I gather that pupils (and parents) also helped with some of the basic costs of Quiet Form, which Miss Knott generously gave back to the school in her will.

Thus the two sculptures are actually gifts from Barbara Hepworth and Margaret Knott, and also from past pupils and parents, to WGHS. They were given by all of us in the confident expectation that they would stay in the school to celebrate our most famous pupil.

It is deeply shaming, as well as dishonourable, that these wonderful sculptures will be lost to the school and to Wakefield, especially now that Wakefield is home to the Hepworth gallery.