Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Jacob Epstein artist

Sculptor Jacob Epstein was born into a Polish-Jewish family in New York City, USA in 1880 and raised in Manhattan’s multicultural Lower East Side. He moved to London in 1905 and received his first British commission for the facade of the British Medical Association Building on the Strand in 1907 - the first of many highly controversial public commissions - although his work as a portrait sculptor was always in demand. Today, he is widely recognised as a pioneering modernist, direct carver, modeller, portraitist and collector.

Born: 1880 New York, USA

Died: 1959 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1905


Biography

Sculptor Jacob Epstein was born into a Polish-Jewish family in New York City, USA on 10 November 1880 and raised in Manhattan’s multicultural Lower East Side. As a child, he suffered from pleurisy and began to draw, attending classes at the New York Art Students' League (1893–98) and sketching the vibrant, multi-ethnic communities around him. Although he rejected the orthodoxy of his upbringing, in 1898 he organised a local artists' exhibition at the Hebrew Institute and was afterwards commissioned by journalist Hutchins Hapgood to illustrate his book, Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York (1902). After spending the winter of 1899–1900 cutting ice in a remote New Jersey community with his Russian artist friend, Bernard Gussow, Epstein turned to sculpture, working for a year in a bronze foundry, while attending an Art Students' League class for sculptors' assistants. Then, with the proceeds of his commission, he sailed to Europe: in Paris, he and Gussow shared a studio in Montparnasse, and Epstein studied at the Académie Julian (1902-3) and the École des Beaux-Arts (1903-4), visited collections ranging from the Louvre to the Trocadero, and ultimately, rejected academic teaching, looking beyond the European model in favour of older traditions, particularly Indian and West African art. Throughout his career he challenged prevailing notions of sexuality and beauty and favoured the non-European model.


In 1905 Epstein moved to London, and the following year married Margaret Dunlop. In 1907, he received his first major British commission to create 18 overlife-size figures for the British Medical Association Building’s facade (now Zimbabwe House), off the Strand; their nudity aroused great controversy, which they survived (only to be mutilated in 1937). Epstein’s second public commission to carve Oscar Wilde’s tomb for Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris (completed in 1912), directly inspired by Assyrian sculpture in the British Museum, abandoned the conventional figure and proved equally controversial. His enthusiasm for direct carving, shared by fellow sculptor Eric Gill, led to their close relationship (1910–12), but their plans to establish an artistic community at Asheham House, Sussex were unrealised. Epstein was naturalised in 1911 and in the same year exhibited at the National Portrait Society. Both his carved and modelled portraits in stone and bronze were always in high demand, despite the controversies around his public commissions. His first solo exhibition took place in London in December 1913, and in the same year, he became a founder member of the progressive exhibiting society The London Group, whose name he is credited with coining; his iconic helmeted, visored Rock Drill (1913–14), later truncated to Torso from Rock Drill (Tate), was shown to an uproarious reception in 1914. Epstein was closely associated with the short-lived Vorticist group (1912–15), especially fellow carver Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. He also renewed his association with the Parisian avant-garde, particularly Modigliani and Brancusi, who shared his championship of direct carving. In 1913 Epstein and fellow Jewish artist David Bomberg visited Paris to select work for the so-called 'Jewish Section' that they co-curated in May 1914 as part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery's Review of Modern Movements, showcasing the work of the local ‘Whitechapel Boys’, alongside that of their European counterparts. During the First World War, Epstein was conscripted into the Jewish 38th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers in 1917 but was discharged, without seeing active service following a breakdown in 1918.


Controversy continued to dog both his public commissions including the carved relief Rima (1924–5, Hyde Park), a memorial to the naturalist and author W. H. Hudson, and the monumental figure groups, Night and Day (1928–9), for Charles Holden's London Underground headquarters, and later monumental carvings including Genesis (1930), Ecce Homo (1934–35), and his autobiographical Jacob and the Angel (1940-41, Tate), one of four late pieces scandalously exhibited at Louis Toussaud's in Blackpool. As Henry Moore later observed, it was Epstein who ‘took the brickbats for modern art'. During the Second World War, Epstein was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to execute six portrait busts including one of Winston Churchill. He also painted in watercolour and gouache, and his scenes of Epping Forest were frequently exhibited at London's Leicester Galleries. Epstein's work was first shown at Ben Uri Gallery in 1930 with a solo exhibitions in 1959. In his last decade, Epstein belatedly received establishment recognition: he was knighted in 1954 and completed his Christ in Majesty at Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff the same year. In 1956 his statue of Field Marshal Jan Smuts was unveiled in Parliament Square, and he completed his large bronze Bowater House group for Edinburgh Gate, Knightsbridge (1958–9) on the day that he died.

Jacob Epstein died in London, England on 21 October 1959 and is buried in Putney Vale cemetery. In 1960 the Arts Council exhibited his major collection of ethnographic sculpture. A further posthumous solo exhibition was held at Ben Uri Gallery in 1980 and a joint exhibition with Dora Gordine in 2006. More than 300 of Epstein's sculptures are represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Tate.

Related books

  • Simon Wilson, From Greek Youth to Flying Demon Angel: Jacob Epstein’s Studies for the Tomb of Oscar Wilde (London: The Sign of Nine, 2020)
  • Mark Antliff, Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre: Jacob Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar Wilde, Avant Garde Critical Studies, Vol. 38, (2020), pp. 37-69
  • Gill Hedley, Sir Jacob Epstein: Babies and Bloomsbury (The Foundling Museum, 2015)
  • Jonathan Lee Cronshaw, Carving a Legacy: The Identity of Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) (Leeds: University of Leeds, 2010)
  • Raquel Bilboa, And There Was Sculpture: Jacob Epstein's Formative Years (1882–1930) (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2009)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, Embracing the Exotic: Jacob Epstein and Dora Gordine (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2006)
  • June Rose, Daemons and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein (London: Constable, 2002)
  • Richard Cork, British Artists: Jacob Epstein (London: Tate Publishing,1999)
  • Stephen Gardiner, Epstein: Artist Against the Establishment (London: M. Joseph, 1992)
  • Terry Friedman, The Hyde Park Atrocity, Epstein's Rima: Creation and Controversy (Leeds: Henry Moore Centre, 1988)
  • Evelyn Silber ed., Jacob Epstein: Sculpture and Drawings (Leeds: Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, 1987)
  • Evelyn Silber and Terry F. Friedman, Jacob Epstein: Drawings and Illustrations (London: Boundary Gallery,1987)
  • Michael Pennington, An Angel for a Martyr: Jacob Epstein’s Tomb for Oscar Wilde (The Whiteknights Press, 1987)
  • Evelyn Silber, The Sculpture of Epstein (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1986)
  • A. Haskell, ed., Epstein Centenary (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 1980)
  • Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein, Sculpture (London: Faber & Faber, 1963)
  • Jacob Epstein, Epstein: An Autobiography, (London: Vista Books, 1963)
  • Jacob Epstein, Jacob Epstein: An Autobiography (London: Arno, 1955)
  • Robert Black, The Art of Jacob Epstein (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1942)
  • Jacob Epstein, Let There Be Sculpture (London: Michael Joseph, 1940)
  • Arnold L. Haskell, The Sculptor Speaks: Jacob Epstein to Arnold L. Haskell. A series of conversations on art (William Heinemann, 1931)
  • Albert Rutherston, Contemporary British Artists: Jacob Epstein (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd. 1925)
  • Bernard Van Dieren, Epstein (London: The Bodley Head Ltd, 1920)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Académie Julian (student)
  • École des Beaux-Arts (student)
  • London Group (co-founder, member)
  • Vorticist Group (associated artist)
  • War Artists' Advisory Committee (artist)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Becoming Gustav Metzger: Uncovering The Early Years, 1945-59, Ben Uri Gallery (2021)
  • Tales from the Colony Room, Dellasposa Gallery (2020)
  • Jacob Epstein: Jacob and the Angel, The New Art Gallery Walsall (2019)
  • Sir Jacob Epstein: Babies and Bloomsbury, The Foundling Museum (2015)
  • Out of Chaos: Ben Uri-100 Years in London, Somerset House (2015)
  • ‘Uproar!’ The First Fifty Years of the London Group, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2013)
  • Jacob Epstein and Blackpool, Grundy Art Gallery (2010)
  • Wild Thing: Epstein/Gaudier-Brzeska/Gill, The Royal Academy of Arts (2009)
  • Embracing the Exotic: Jacob Epstein and Dora Gordine, Ben Uri Gallery (2006)
  • Epstein Busts, Walker Art Gallery (2005)
  • The Modern and the New: An Examination of the Permanent Collection alongside New Works by Invited British, European and American Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery (2004)
  • Jacob Epstein: Sculpture and Drawings, Leeds City Art Galleries and Whitechapel Art Gallery (1987)
  • Jacob Epstein Centenary, Tate Gallery (1980)
  • Jacob Epstein, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (1980)
  • Epstein Centenary 1980: Bronze, Drawings and Watercolours, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1980)
  • Epstein: Arts Council of Great Britain (1961)
  • Epstein, Edinburgh Festival Society (1961)
  • Sir Jacob Epstein: Exhibition of Bronzes, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1959)
  • Retrospective exhibition, Tate Gallery (1952)
  • A New Carving, ‘Lazarus’ and other Recent Sculpture by Jacob Epstein, The Leicester Galleries (1950)
  • Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery (1945)
  • New Sculpture and Drawings of Children by Jacob Epstein, Leicester Galleries (1939)
  • Exhibition of Jewish Artists, Woburn House, Ben Uri Gallery (1934)
  • Recent Sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Leicester Galleries (1917, 1920,1924, 1926)
  • Epstein’s Rock Drill, Twenty-One Gallery (1915)
  Jacob Epstein
   
Ben Uri collection

Jacob Epstein in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Jacob Epstein]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Jacob Epstein] in the Ben Uri Library