68 Facts About Jacob Epstein

Sir Jacob Epstein was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture.

Jacob Epstein was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.

Jacob Epstein's sculpture is distinguished by its vigorous rough-hewn realism.

Jacob Epstein often produced controversial works which challenged ideas on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks.

Jacob Epstein painted; many of his watercolours and gouaches were of Epping Forest, where he lived for a time.

Jacob Epstein was Jewish, and negative reviews of his work sometimes took on an antisemitic flavour, though he did not attribute the "average unfavorable criticism" of his work to antisemitism.

Jacob Epstein was born at 102 Hester Street on the Lower East Side of New York City.

The family was middle-class, owning a number of businesses and tenements, and Jacob Epstein was the third of their eight surviving children.

Jacob Epstein began selling his drawings and provided illustrations for two articles by the journalist Hutchins Hapgood.

Jacob Epstein spent the winter of 1899 working as an ice-cutter with his friend Bernard Gussrow at Greenwood Lake in New Jersey.

Jacob Epstein used the money from the commission to leave New York City for Paris in September 1902.

On his second full day in Paris, during October 1902, Jacob Epstein saw the funeral procession of Emile Zola and witnessed some of the anti-semitic abuse directed at the passing cortege.

Jacob Epstein studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from October 1902 until March 1903 and then, from April 1903 to 1904, at the Academie Julian where he was taught by Jean-Paul Laurens.

Jacob Epstein shared a studio in Montparnasse with Bernard Gussrow and throughout 1904 and 1905 appears to have studied independently in various Paris museums.

Jacob Epstein regularly visited the Louvre to view its collection of non-European sculpture, studied Indian and Far Eastern art in the Musee Guimet and artworks from China in the Musee Cernuschi.

Jacob Epstein visited Rodin in his studio and met Margaret Dunlop, known as Peggy, who encouraged him to visit London, which he did in 1904.

Jacob Epstein had a wax model shown in a large exhibition of Jewish art at the Whitechapel Art Gallery during 1906 and an oil painting included in the NEAC's December 1906 show.

In 1907, Jacob Epstein moved his studio to 72 Cheyne Walk where he began working on his first major public commission, a series of statues for the new British Medical Association building in London.

Jacob Epstein created models of each figure in his studio and these were then cast in plaster.

Jacob Epstein then made minor adjustments and changes to the stone figures.

In 1909, Jacob Epstein carved a stone version which he retained for the rest of his life.

Jacob Epstein spent nine months in Gill's studio at Ditchling carving, from a block of Hopton Wood stone, the new design for Wilde's tomb and for which Gill designed the inscription.

In June 1912, Jacob Epstein had the completed tomb displayed in his London studio for public viewing.

Jacob Epstein refused and on several occasions visited the cemetery and, with the help of friends including Nina Hamnett and Brancusi, removed the tarpaulin only for the cemetery authorities to replace it later.

Jacob Epstein refused to attend the official unveiling which was performed by Aleister Crowley shortly afterwards.

In May and June 1912, Epstein was among the artists hired to produce artworks for a new London nightclub, The Cave of the Golden Calf, which brought him into contact with a number of younger artists, notably Wyndham Lewis and the poet T E Hulme.

At Pett Level, Jacob Epstein became aware of the dark green mineral Serpentinite, which he called Flenite, and used it for sculptures, including Flenite Women and Flenite Relief which showed an infant emerging from the womb.

Jacob Epstein carved two figures of pregnant women, one of which was eventually acquired by the Tate.

Jacob Epstein created three marble sculptures of pairs of doves mating, the first two of which were shown in group exhibitions during 1913 and at his solo exhibition at the Twenty-One Gallery in December 1913.

In London, Jacob Epstein rented a room above a bookshop in Devonshire Street and used a garage in the adjacent mews to began work on Rock Drill, which was too large for the Pett Level shed.

In March 1915, at a London Group exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, Jacob Epstein exhibited several works, including the Flenite pieces and Doves plus, for the first time in public, Rock Drill.

In May 1916, Jacob Epstein made the decision to break up Rock Drill, removing the drill entirely and reducing the upper figure to a one-armed torso, which he had cast in bronze.

Jacob Epstein subsequently produced a notable portrait bust of Admiral Lord Fisher.

Several attempts were made to have Jacob Epstein created an official war artist.

Jacob Epstein spent most of 1919 making portrait sculptures but returned to work on a large bronze, The Risen Christ, which he had abandoned when called up.

In 1922, Epstein secured a commission from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, RSPB, for a memorial in Hyde Park, London to the author and naturalist W H Hudson.

The abuse aimed at Rima and Jacob Epstein lasted for years.

In 1927 Jacob Epstein agreed to hold an exhibition in New York at the Ferargil Gallery on West 47th Street and spent most of that year preparing fifty works for the show.

In early 1928 the Jacob Epstein family moved to 18 Hyde Park Gate, a five-storey house with a ballroom that became Jacob Epstein's studio and allowed him to start gathering together his unsold and unfinished works from various sheds and garages around London.

Jacob Epstein retained Deerhurst, a cottage and studio at Loughton in Epping Forest.

In 1929, Jacob Epstein carved Genesis, a massive, marble, three-ton figure of a pregnant women with a swollen belly and a face based on an African mask.

Jacob Epstein took particular exception to an insulting review by the artist Paul Nash.

Jacob Epstein spent the summer of 1933 at his cottage in Epping Forest and, in the space of two months, painted over a hundred landscapes and flower compositions.

Behold the Man depicted a squat Christ with a huge head that, in Jacob Epstein's words, was 'a symbol of man, bound, crowned with thorns and facing with a relentless and over-mastering gaze of pity and prescience our unhappy world'.

Jacob Epstein never sold the work and it remained in his studio throughout his life.

In 1958 he was approached by the rector of Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, who asked if Jacob Epstein would leave Ecce Homo to the abbey in his will.

Jacob Epstein agreed but local church members raised a petition that persuaded the church authorities to overrule the rector and refuse the gift.

Attempts to find an alternative solution, such as removing and re-carving elements of the statues, were hindered when Jacob Epstein insulted the Southern Rhodesian High Commissioner in a press interview.

Jacob Epstein began, in 1938, to sculpt Adam, a seven foot high figure carved from a three-ton block of alabaster.

Adam was of great personal significance to Jacob Epstein who had, throughout the first half of 1939, worked day and night on the figure.

Jacob Epstein completed a bust of Winston Churchill in early 1947.

Jacob Epstein had numerous casts of the Churchill bust made and it was among his most popular works.

Jacob Epstein worked on two large private projects, Jacob and the Angel and Lucifer.

Jacob Epstein imagined the fallen angel Lucifer as a tall, winged, androgynous figure with male genitals and a female face, that of the Kashmiri model Sunita Devi, all cast in a golden patinated bronze.

The Fitzwilliam refused the donation as did both the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate but several other museums did show interest and Jacob Epstein was pleased when the statue entered the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Jacob Epstein's 1947 carving of Lazarus was bought by New College, Oxford and installed in the chapel there in January 1952.

The convent agreed to Jacob Epstein's design provided he would listen any suggestions they made.

Such was the scale and quantity of work Jacob Epstein took on, he was given the use of an extra large studio in the Royal College of Art.

The cathedral had originally commissioned the figure to be made in gilded plaster but, after Jacob Epstein offered to pay for it to be cast in metal, the church authorities agreed to cover the cost of an aluminium casting.

Jacob Epstein was appointed an Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1954 New Year Honours.

Jacob Epstein strongly suspected that Winston Churchill had nominated him for the honour.

In 1921, Jacob Epstein began the longest of these relationships, with Kathleen Garman, one of the Garman sisters, mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death.

Margaret Jacob Epstein died in 1947 and he married Kathleen Garman in 1955.

Jacob Epstein is the subject of the painting Portrait of Kitty.

Jacob Epstein married a second time in 1955, to economist Wynne Godley.

Jacob Epstein died in August 1959 at his Hyde Park Gate home and was interred in Putney Vale Cemetery on 24 August 1959 with a service conducted by Dr Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury.

In 1961, two hundred plaster casts by Jacob Epstein were donated by Kathleen Garman to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Ryan donated Jacob Epstein's 1927 seated bronze Madonna and Child, which she had bought in the 1930s, to the Riverside Church, New York City in 1960.