Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein KBE (10 November 1880 – 19 August 1959) was a British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911 He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks He also made paintings and drawings, and often exhibited his work
Epstein’s parents were Polish Jewish refugees, living on New York’s Lower East Side His family was middle-class, and he was the third of five children His interest in drawing came from long periods of illness; as a child he suffered from pleurisy
He studied art in his native New York as a teenager, sketching the city, and joined the Art Students League of New York in 1900 For his livelihood, he worked in a bronze foundry by day, studying drawing and sculptural modelling at night Epstein’s first major commission was to illustrate Hutchins Hapgood’s Spirit of the Ghetto The money from the commission was used by Epstein to move to Paris
Moving to Europe in 1902, he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts He settled in London in 1905 and married Margaret Dunlop in 1906 In 1911 he became a British subject Many of Epstein’s works were sculpted at his two cottages in Loughton, Essex, where he lived first at number 49 then 50, Baldwin’s Hill (there is a blue plaque on number 50) He served briefly in the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, known as the Jewish Legion during World War I; following a breakdown, he was discharged in 1918 without having left England
In London, Epstein involved himself with a bohemian and artistic crowd Revolting against ornate, pretty art, he made bold, often harsh and massive forms of bronze or stone His sculpture is distinguished by its vigorous rough-hewn realism Avant-garde in concept and style, his works often shocked his audience This was not only a result of their (often explicit) sexual content, but also because they deliberately abandoned the conventions of classical Greek sculpture favoured by European Academic sculptors to experiment instead with the aesthetics of art traditions as diverse as those of India, West Africa, and the Pacific Islands People in Liverpool, however, nicknamed his nude male sculpture over the door of Lewis’s department store “Dickie Lewis” Such factors may have focused disproportionate attention on certain aspects of Epstein’s long and productive career, throughout which he aroused hostility, especially challenging taboos surrounding the depiction of sexuality
London was not ready for Epstein’s first major commission – 18 large nude sculptures made in 1908 for the façade of Charles Holden’s building for the British Medical Association on The Strand (now Zimbabwe House) were initially considered shocking to Edwardian sensibilities, again mainly due to the perception that they were sexually over-explicit In art-historical terms, however, the Strand sculptures were controversial for quite a different reason: they represented Epstein’s first thoroughgoing attempt to break away from traditional European iconography in favour of elements derived from an alternative sculptural milieu – that of classical India The female figures in particular may be seen deliberately to incorporate the posture and hand gestures of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art from the subcontinent in no uncertain terms The current, mutilated condition of many of the sculptures is also not entirely connected with prudish censorship; the damage was caused in the 1930s when possibly dangerous projecting features were hacked off after pieces fell from one of the statues
One of the most famous of Epstein’s early commissions is the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, “which was condemned as indecent and at one point was covered in tarpaulin by the French police”
Between 1913 and 1915, Epstein was associated with the short-lived Vorticism movement and produced one of his best known sculptures The Rock Drill In 1915, John Quinn, wealthy American collector and patron to the modernists, bought an Epstein sculpture to add his private collection
In 1916, Epstein was commissioned by Viscount Tredegar to produce a bronze head of Newport poet W H Davies The bronze, regarded by many as the most accurate artistic impression of Davies and a copy of which Davies owned himself, may be found at Newport Museum and Art Gallery
In 1928, Epstein sculpted the head of the popular singer and film star Paul Robeson A commission from Holden for the new headquarters building of the London Electric Railway generated another controversy in 1929 His nude sculptures Day and Night above the entrances of 55 Broadway were again considered indecent and a debate raged for some time regarding demands to remove the offending statues which had been carved in-situ Eventually a compromise was reached to modify the smaller of the two figures represented on Day But the controversy affected his commissions for public work which dried up until World War II
Between the late 1930s and the mid-1950s, numerous works by Epstein were exhibited in Blackpool Adam, Consummatum Est, Jacob and the Angel and Genesis, and other works, were initially displayed in an old drapery shop surrounded by red velvet curtains The crowds were ushered in at the cost of a shilling by a barker on the street After a small tour of American fun fairs, the works were returned to Blackpool and were exhibited in the anatomical curiosities section of Louis Tussaud’s waxworks The works were displayed alongside dancing marionettes, diseased body parts and conjoined (“Siamese”) twin babies in jars Placing Epstein within the context of freakish curiosity, especially at a time of such hostility towards the Jews, perhaps added to Epstein’s decision not to create further large-scale direct carvings
Bronze portrait sculpture formed one of Epstein’s staple products, and perhaps the best known These sculptures were often executed with roughly textured surfaces, expressively manipulating small surface planes and facial details Some fine examples are in the National Portrait Gallery Another example is the bust of the Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman that sat in the marble halls of Highbury for many years before being moved to the new Emirates Stadium
During the Second World War, Epstein was asked to undertake six commissions for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee After completing bronze busts of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, General Sir Alan Cunningham, and Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal – and Ernest Bevin, Epstein accepted a commission to create busts of John Anderson and Winston Churchill He completed a bust of Winston Churchill in early 1947
Epstein’s aluminium figure of Christ in Majesty (1954–55), is suspended above the nave in Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff, on a concrete arch designed by George Pace
His larger sculptures were his most expressive and experimental, but also his most vulnerable His depiction of Rima, one of author W H Hudson’s most famous characters, graces a serene enclosure in Hyde Park Even here, a visitor became so outraged as to defile it with paint He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International, which was organised by the Fairmount Park Association (now the Association for Public Art) and held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949
Epstein would often sculpt the images of friends, casual acquaintances, and even people dragged from the street into his studio almost at random He worked even on his dying day He also painted; many of his watercolours and gouaches were of Epping Forest, where he lived (at Loughton) and sculpted These were often exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London His Monkwood Autumn and Pool, Epping Forest date from 1944–45
Epstein was Jewish, and negative reviews of his work sometimes took on an antisemitic flavour, though he did not attribute the “average unfavorable criticism” of his work to antisemitism
Epstein met Albert Einstein at Roughton Heath, Norfolk, in 1933 and had three sittings for a bust He remembered his meeting with Einstein as, “His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous and the profound This was a combination which delighted me He resembled the ageing Rembrandt”