Jacob Epstein

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Sir Jacob Epstein

(born Nov. 10, 1880, New York, N.Y., U.S. — died Aug. 21, 1959, London, Eng.) U.S.-born British sculptor. He studied in Paris and settled in England in 1905. His 18 nude figures known as the Strand Statues (1907 – 08) provoked charges of indecency; his nude angel on the tomb of Oscar Wilde (1912) in Paris was also attacked. In 1913 he became affiliated with Vorticism and developed a style characterized by simple forms and calm surfaces carved from stone; his works often partly retained the shape of the original block, or sometimes they were modeled in plaster. He is best known for religious and allegorical figures carved in colossal blocks of stone and for bronze portrait busts of celebrities. Occasionally he produced monumental bronze groups, such as St. Michael and the Devil (1958) for Coventry Cathedral.

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

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

5min Related Video: Jacob Epstein

Top

Scientist: Sir Michael Anthony Epstein

Top

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.

Art Encyclopedia: Sir Jacob Epstein

Top

(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.

Biography: Sir Jacob Epstein

Top

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.

Life

Epstein's parents were Polish Jewish refugees living on New York's Lower East Side. His family were middle-class Orthodox Jews, 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. From a young age, Epstein rejected his family's orthodoxy and grew tired of religious ceremony. He took an interest in pantheism and anarchism, but claimed in his autobiography that his only real interest was art, and that he was never politically or religiously active as an adult. 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 modeling 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 after marrying Margaret Dunlop in 1907 he became a British citizen. 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 (see the blue plaque on number 50). He served briefly in the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers aka the Jewish Legion during World War I.

Despite being married to and continuing to live with Margaret, Epstein had a number of relationships with other women that brought him his five children; Peggy Jean (born 1918), Theo (born 1924-died 1954), Kathleen (Kitty, born 1926), Esther (born 1929-died 1954) and Jackie (born 1934). His first wife, Margaret generally tolerated these relationships — even to the extent of bringing up his first and last children. Margaret, "tolerated Epstein's infidelities, allowed his models and lovers to live in the family home and raised Epstein's first child, Peggy Jean, who was the daughter of Meum Lindsell, one of Epstein's previous lovers. However, Margaret's tolerance did not extend to Epstein's relationship with Kathleen Garman, and in 1923 Margaret shot and wounded Kathleen in the shoulder."^[2]

In 1921 Epstein began the longest of these relationships with Kathleen Garman, one of the Garman sisters,^[3] mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death. Margaret Epstein died in 1947 and after Epstein was knighted in 1954 he married Kathleen Garman in 1955.

Kitty married painter Lucian Freud — grandson of Sigmund Freud — in 1948 and is mother of two of his daughters, Annie and Annabel. In 1953 they divorced. She married a second time in 1955, to economist Wynne Godley.^[4] They have one daughter.

The Garman Ryan Collection,^[5] including several works by Epstein, was donated to the people of Walsall, by Lady Epstein in 1973. It is on display in Walsall Art Gallery.^[6]

Although Epstein's work was highly original for its time, its influence on the younger generation of sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth may have been limited , as much of Epstein's work was not on public display but in a few private collections, mainly in the United States. However, according to June Rose, in her biography, Moore was befriended by the older sculptor during the early 1920s and visited Epstein in his studio. Epstein, along with Moore and Hepworth, all expressed a deep fascination with the non-western art from the British Museum.

Epstein is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.

Work

Jacob Epstein, photographed in 1924 by George Charles Beresford

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. Brilliantly avant-garde in concept and style, his works often shocked the general public. He often used expressively distorted figures, drawing more on non-Western art than the classical ideal. People in Liverpool 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. One of the most famous of Epstein's early commissions is the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise cemetery, Paris, "which was condemned as indecent and at one point was covered in tarpaulin by the French police."^[2]

However, the mutilated condition of many of the sculptures has nothing to do with prudish censorship; it was caused in the 1930s when possibly dangerous projecting features were hacked-off after pieces fell from one of the statues. Between 1913 and 1915 Epstein was associated with the short-lived Vorticism movement and produced one of his best known sculptures The Rock Drill.

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 (amongst other less notable 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 the Louis Tussaud's waxworks. The works were displayed alongside dancing marionettes, diseased body parts and 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 famous example is the bust of legendary Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman that sat in the marble halls of Highbury for many years before being moved to the new Emirates Stadium.

Epstein's aluminium figure of Christ in Majesty (1954-5), 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.

Epstein was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949.

Enthusiastic about his work, Epstein would 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.

Epstein 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 Gallery in London. His "Monkwood Autumn" and "Pool, Epping Forest" date from 1944-45.

The character of 'Wetherill' in E.C. Bentley's detective novel 'Trent's Own Case' is a hostile depiction of Epstein.

Notes

Selected major pieces

1907–8 Ages of Man [1] - British Medical Association headquarters, The Strand, London — mutilated/destroyed
1911 Oscar Wilde Memorial — the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
1913–4 The Rock Drill [2] (symbolising 'the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into')
1917 marble Venus — Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
1919 bronze Christ — Wheathampstead, England
1923 W. H. Hudson Memorial, Rima [3] — Hyde Park, London
1928–9 Night and Day — 55 Broadway, St. James', London
1933 Head of Albert Einstein — Honolulu Academy of Arts
1939 Adam in alabaster — Blackpool, England. Now residing in Harewood House, Leeds
1940 Jacob and the Angel [4] — the Tate Gallery Collection (originally controversially "anatomical")
1947 Lazarus — New College, Oxford
1950 Madonna and Child [5] — Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London
1954 Social Consciousness [6] — Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
1958 St Michael's Victory over the Devil — Coventry Cathedral
1959 Rush of Green [7] — Hyde Park, London

Sculptures

Kathlene, in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery	Bust of Joseph Conrad (1924) in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery	Bust of Einstein (1933) in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery	Day and Night (1928) Portland stone, carved for the London Electric Railway headquarters were considered too shocking when they were unveiled
Jan Smuts in Parliament Square, London	The Archangel Lucifer (1944-5) in the round gallery of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery	St Michael's Victory over the Devil (1958), on the new Coventry Cathedral	Oscar Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Liverpool Resurgent, Lewis's, Liverpool

Quotations

"To accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me, and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched." - Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography (London, 1955), p.29

"A wife, a lover, can perhaps never see what the artist sees. They rarely ever do. Perhaps a really mediocre artist has more chance of success." — Jacob Epstein

"The artist is the world's scapegoat." — Jacob Epstein

Bibliography

Below is a brief overview of key texts by or relating to Epstein:

Buckle, Richard, Jacob Epstein : sculptor , (London: Faber 1963)
Cork, Richard, Jacob Epstein, (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999)
Cronshaw, Jonathan, The Sideshow and the Problems of History: Jacob Epstein's Adam (1939). (University of Leeds, 2005)
Epstein, Jacob, The sculptor speaks : Jacob Epstein to Arnold L. Haskell, a series of conversations on art, (London : W. Heinemann, 1931.)
Epstein, Jacob, Let there be sculpture : an autobiography, (London: Michael Joseph, 1940)
Friedman, Terry, 'The Hyde Park atrocity' : Epstein's Rima : creation and controversy (Leeds: Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, 1988)
Gardner, Stephen, Jacob Epstein: Artist Against the Establishment, (London: Joseph, 1992)
Hapgood, Hutchins, The spirit of the ghetto : studies of the Jewish quarter of New York; with drawings from life by Jacob Epstein, (New York ; London : Funk and Wagnalls, 1909)
Silber, Evelyn et al. Jacob Epstein : sculpture and drawings, (Leeds : Leeds City Art Galleries ; London : Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1987)
Turner, Colin, A Caricature of a Sculptor. Jacob Epstein and the British Press: a critical analysis of old history and new evidence, (PhD Thesis, Loughborough University, 2009)
Carving mountains : modern stone sculptures in England 1907-37 : Frank Dobson, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Eric Gill, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, John Skeaping. (Cambridge: Kettles Yard, 1998)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jacob Epstein

Jacob Epstein An article on Jacob Epstein's work on The National Archives website. Includes references to files held at The National Archives.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jacob Epstein

Persondata
NAME	Epstein, Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH	November 10, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City
DATE OF DEATH	August 19, 1959
PLACE OF DEATH	London, England

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

Learn More

	Vorticism (art)
	Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (art)
	Cuthbert Hamilton (art)

	What is Theo Epstein's email address? Read answer...
	Is the Epstein-Barr virus active? Read answer...
	What are the lyrics to 'Rescue You' by Jake Epstein? Read answer...

Help us answer these

	Can Epstein barr virus be fatal?
	How did you get Epstein Barr Virus?
	How did Brian Epstein die?

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

Copyrights:

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Scientist. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved. Read more
		Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jacob Epstein". Read more

Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1934
Born	November 10, 1880(1880-11-10)
Died	August 19, 1959 (aged 78)
Field	Sculpture