Sir Jacob Epstein - Life, Work, Selected major pieces, Quotations

Sculptor, born in New York City, USA. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, moving to London, UK, in 1905, and becoming a British subject. Several of his symbolic sculptures, such as ‘Ecce homo’ (1934), resulted in accusations of indecency and blasphemy. He was an outstanding modeller of bronze portrait heads of celebrities and children. In the 1950s, his last two large works, ‘Christ in Majesty’ (in aluminium; Llandaff Cathedral) and ‘St Michael and the Devil’ (in bronze; Coventry Cathedral), won more immediate acclaim. He was knighted in 1954.

Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 19 August 1959) was an American-born sculptor who worked chiefly in the UK, where he pioneered modern sculpture, often producing controversial works that challenged taboos concerning what public artworks appropriately depict.

Life

Epstein's parents were Polish refugees living in New York's Lower East Side. Many of Epstein's works were sculpted at his two cottages in Loughton, Essex, where he lived first at no.

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; In 1921 Epstein began the longest of these relationship with Kathleen Garman , mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death.

Kitty married painter Lucian Freud in 1948 and is mother of two of his daughters. Margaret Epstein died in 1947 and after Epstein was knighted in 1954 he married Kathleen Garman in 1955.

The Garman Ryan Collection, including several works by Epstein, was donated to the people of Walsall, by Kathleen Garman in 1973.

Work

In London, Epstein involved himself with a bohemian and artistic crowd.

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.

Between 1913 to 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.

Bronze portrait sculpture formed one of Epstein's staple products, and perhaps the best known.

His larger sculpture was his most expressive and experimental, but also his most vulnerable.

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.

Selected major pieces

1907–8 Ages of Man - British Medical Association headquarters, The Strand, London — mutilated/destroyed 1911 Oscar Wilde Memorial — the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1913–4 The Rock Drill (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. Hudson Memorial, Rima — Hyde Park, London 1928–9 Night and Day — 55 Broadway, St. James', London 1939 an enormous Adam in alabaster — Blackpool, England 1940 Jacob and the Angel — the Tate Gallery Collection (originally controversially "anatomical") 1947 Lazarus — New College, Oxford 1950 Madonna and Child — Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London 1954 Social Consciousness — Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1958 St Michael's Victory over the Devil — Coventry Cathedral 1959 Rush of Green — Hyde Park, London

Quotations

"A wife, a lover, can perhaps never see what the artist sees. — Jacob Epstein

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