Jacob Epstein
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Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 19 August 1959) was an American-born sculptor who worked chiefly in England, 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. He studied art there as a teenager, sketching the city, and joined the Art Students League of New York in 1900. Then he worked in a bronze foundry by day, studying drawing and sculptural modeling at night. Moving to Europe in 1902, he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, where Auguste Rodin taught him. 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 no. 49 then 50, Baldwin's Hill (blue plaque on no.50).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), Kathleen (Kitty, born 1926), Esther (born 1929) and Jackie (born 1934). Margaret generally tolerated these relationships - even to the extent of bringing-up his first and last children. In 1921 Epstein began the longest of these relationship with Kathleen Garman [link], 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, England, Kathleen Garman, in 1973, and is on display in Walsall Art Gallery.
Work
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 are said to have named his nude male sculpture over the door of Lewis's department store "Swinging Dick". 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. Works condemned in his time as obscene and disgraceful today communicate thought and understanding.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 initally considered shocking to Edwardian sensibilities. 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.
In 1912 to 1914 Epstein was associated with the Vorticists.
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 ragged for sometime regarding demands to remove the offending statutes which had been carved in-situ. Eventually a compromise was reached to modify the smaller of the two figures represented on Night. But the controversy affected his commissions for public work which dried-up until World War II.
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.
His larger sculpture was 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.
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.
Selected major pieces
- 1907–8 Ages of Man [link] - British Medical Association headquaters, The Strand, London — mutilated/destroyed
- 1911 Oscar Wilde Memorial — the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
- 1913–4 The Rock Drill [link] (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 [link] — 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 [link] — the Tate Gallery Collection (originally controversially "anatomical")
- 1947 Lazarus — New College, Oxford
- 1950 Madonna and Child [link] — Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London
- 1958 St Michael's Victory over the Devil — Coventry Cathedral
- 1959 Rush of Green [link] — Hyde Park, London
Quotations
"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
External links
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