British virologist (1921–)

Epstein, a Londoner, was educated at Cambridge University and at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in his native city. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps (1945–47), he returned to the Middlesex Hospital as an assistant pathologist. He left the Middlesex in 1965 and in 1968 he was appointed professor of pathology at Bristol University, a position he held until his retirement in 1985. He has continued to work in the Department of Clinical Medicine at Oxford.

In 1961 Epstein heard Denis Burkitt describe the distribution of a particularly savage lymphoma throughout Africa. Epstein saw that “anything which has geographical factors such as climate affecting distribution must have some kind of biological cause.” That biological cause, Epstein suspected, for no very good reason, was a virus.

Although Epstein received tumor samples from Burkitt, he found them impossible to culture and saw no trace of any virus. After struggling unsuccessfully for two years, Epstein and his assistant Yvonne Barr developed a new approach. Instead of working with small tumor lumps they divided the pieces into single cells. The technique proved successful and for the first time ever human lymphocytes were being grown in a continuous culture.

Yet Epstein initially found no virus until he examined some cells under an electron microscope. The virus was named the Epstein–Barr virus and proved to be a member of the herpes family.

The virus turned out to have a worldwide distribution and was identified as the cause of mononeucleosis. Clearly, its presence alone is insufficient to cause lymphoma. For if most of us have the virus, why is lymphoma not distributed more widely? Epstein and Burkitt argued that only in cases in which malaria or some other chronic condition has suppressed a child's immature immune system, could the virus provoke lymphoid cells into malignant growth.

(b New York, 10 Nov 1880; d London, 19 Aug 1959). British sculptor of American birth. Although he spent his childhood in New York, Epstein defined his identity as an artist only after moving to London in 1905. He had studied at the Arts Students League in New York before moving to the Acad?mie Julien in Paris. His first two years in London remain relatively obscure, but in 1907 the architect Charles Holden invited him to execute a major commission for the new headquarters of the British Medical Association in The Strand (now Zimbabwe House). Holden and Epstein were united by their enthusiasm for Walt Whitman's poetry, and they agreed that 18 large figures should be carved for the building's fa?ade, celebrating nakedness in the spirit of Whitman's poems. Epstein himself announced that the scheme would celebrate 'the great primal facts of man and woman', and he managed to fuse the 'medical' side of the commission with his own most personal preoccupations: erotic delight, mortality, motherhood, virility and above all an uninhibited celebration of humanity in dignified nakedness. The National Vigilance Society, affronted by his figure of Maternity, started a vituperative press campaign to have the carvings removed. The assault nearly succeeded, and Epstein became notorious. However, the combined support of eminent artists, critics and museum directors saved the statues for the time being, although they were severely mutilated 20 years later, when the building's disapproving new owners declared that their condition was unsafe.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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The American-born English sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), known principally for his expressively modeled portrait busts, periodically returned to direct carving throughout his career, predominantly drawing on biblical themes.

Born on the East Side of New York City of Jewish immigrant parents, Jacob Epstein was a pupil of the academic sculptor George Grey Barnard at the Art Students League. Barnard's influence was a formative one, and Epstein's later slightly attenuated figurative style was reminiscent of his teacher's. While a student Epstein helped to support himself by contributing sketches to Century Magazine; he also illustrated Hutchins Hapgood's The Spirit of the Ghetto (1901). In 1902 Epstein left for Paris, where he continued his artistic education briefly at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. He remained in Paris until 1905, and his work of this period shows more than a passing reference to the work of Auguste Rodin, especially in the use of the fragmented figure. Several large programmatic schemes that Epstein worked on at this time, while suggestive of Rodin's ambitious Gates of Hell, stylistically drew upon the highly formalized Egyptian sculpture that Epstein saw in the Louvre.

Epstein moved to London in 1905 and subsequently became a British subject. His first significant work appeared in 1907, when he was commissioned to carve 18 figures for the British Medical Association Building in the Strand, London. Completed the following year, these pieces solidly established the young sculptor's reputation; thus began the many privately commissioned portraits, which continued throughout his career. However, Epstein was not content only with modeling portraits, and he simultaneously pursued his interest in direct carving, restricting his subject matter to the larger themes of mankind, a search for the primordial, archetypal image. In his carved works, especially those executed between 1910 and 1915, he addressed himself to cubist and futurist theories. About 1910 Epstein became keenly interested in African sculpture and amassed one of the finest collections of African art in Great Britain. He continued his pursuit of mastering the form language of other cultures and was drawn particularly to the sculpture of Egypt, Assyria, and pre-Columbian America. His memorial for the tomb of Oscar Wilde (1912) in the Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris, reflects that interest in stylized relief carving, which departed radically from the already established esthetic of Rodin.

On his return to London, Epstein became affiliated with two avant-garde groups of artists: the London Group and the Vorticists. From 1913 to 1915 he worked almost exclusively in a highly abstract manner, carving many of his pieces in flenite. The noted critic T. E. Hulme referred to the work of this period as the seeds of a new, constructive geometric art. Epstein's Rock Drill (1913) was his most ambitious statement of this prewar period. By 1915 he had returned to his modeled portraits, and it was not until a decade later that he again turned his chisel to the stone. Epstein's work from 1915 until his death in London in 1959 falls primarily into two categories: the commissioned portraits and the larger carvings. His portraits are characterized by a vigorously modeled, expressionistic surface, the most representative of which are the Self-portrait with a Beard (1918), Joseph Conrad (1924), and Haile Selassie (1936). Although his clientele included the famous men of his time, some of his most successful pieces in bronze are the portraits of his immediate family and the various models who sat for him. Epstein's carvings were the more controversial body of his work, more innovative and abstract than his portraits. They reflect an entirely different set of concerns, an attempt to continue the themes of the Hebraic-Christian tradition into the form language of 20th-century sculpture. His most representative works in this medium are Rima (1924), the W. H. Hudson memorial in the bird sanctuary in Hyde Park, London; Day and Night (1929) for St. James's Underground Station, London; and Lazarus (1948) for New College, Oxford. His later commissions, the Cavendish Square Madonna and Child (1950) at the Convent of the Holy Child, London, Social Consciousness (1951), the Llandaff Cathedral Christ in Majesty (1955), and St. Michael and the Devil for the new Coventry Cathedral (1958), although executed in bronze, reflect as well those continuing themes first stated in his carvings.

Further Reading

The most complete publication on Epstein's sculpture, including a catalogue raisonné of his work, is Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein, Sculptor (1963). Statements by the artist on his work can be found in Epstein: An Autobiography (1955), an extended and revised edition of Let There Be Sculpture (1940). An excellent account of his early work appears in The Sculptor Speaks (1931), written by Epstein and Arnold Haskell. Bernard van Dieren, Epstein (1920), provides useful critical material and one of the best assessments of the sources for Epstein's style.

Additional Sources

Epstein, Jacob, Sir, Epstein, an autobiography, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Gardiner, Stephen, Epstein, artist against the establishment, London: M. Joseph, 1992.

For more information on Sir Jacob Epstein, visit Britannica.com.

Epstein, Sir Jacob (1880-1959). Sculptor, painter, and draughtsman. Born in New York, he studied in Paris before settling in London in 1905 and becoming a British citizen. From his first commission in 1907/8, eighteen figures for the BMA headquarters in the Strand, which were attacked as obscene, his work was surrounded by controversy. His Oscar Wilde memorial in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris (1910-11), was at first banned as indecent. Two of the best-known monumental sculptures are Christ in Majesty (1954/5) in Llandaff cathedral and St Michael and the Devil (1955/8) at Coventry cathedral.

(ĕp'stīn) , 1880–1959, sculptor, b. New York City. He studied with Rodin in Paris and later worked chiefly in England. In revolt against the ornate and the pretty in art, Epstein produced bold, often harsh and massive forms in stone or bronze that were the subjects of frequent controversy. His 18 large figures on the British Medical Association Building (1907–8) were removed in 1937 as offensive and structurally dangerous. Epstein's major pieces include the Oscar Wilde Memorial (1911; Père-Lachaise, Paris); a marble Venus (1917; Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn.); a bronze Christ (1919; Wheathamstead, England); the “Rima” figure that forms the W. H. Hudson Memorial (1925; Hyde Park, London); an enormous Adam in alabaster (1939; Blackpool, England); figures for Fairmount Park, Philadelphia; and a Madonna and Child (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London). Some of Epstein's best-known work is in bronze portraiture, executed with roughly textured surfaces. His perceptive portraits include those of the duke of Marlborough, Joseph Conrad, Albert Einstein, and Jawaharlal Nehru. Epstein was knighted in 1954. See his autobiography (2d ed. 1963); drawings ed. by Kathleen Epstein (1962); study by Robert Black (1942).

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