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Sir Jacob Epstein

1880 - 1959

Sculptor. He studied drawing and painting c.1896 at the Art Students’ League in New York. He attended night classes in sculpture 1899--c.1901 under George Grey Bernard, and worked by day in a bronze foundry. Between 1902 and 1904 he studied sculpture at the École des Beaux Arts, then at the Académie Julian, Paris, before settling in London. He became a British subject in 1907 and received his first major commission, to carve eighteen life-size figures for the façade of the new British Medical Association building in the Strand, London (1907--8). These became the centre of the first of a number of public scandals caused by his unconventional treatment of the nude. In 1912, while in Paris engaged in the erection of his tomb of Oscar Wilde (1908--12) for the Père Lachaise cemetery, he met Picasso, Brancusi and Modigliani. He became a member of the London Art Group and had his first one-man show at the Twenty One Gallery, Adelphi, London in 1913, being briefly associated with the Vorticist group. Until c.1916 his work tended towards abstraction, but he was also well known for his portrait sculpture. His main subjects were family members, friends, high society people and the famous men and women of the day, busts of whom include: Joseph Conrad (1924) and Albert Einstein (1933), both in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Princess Margaret (1933). Other major works include Rock Drill (1913--25), destroyed; bronze cast of Rock Drill torso (in Tate Gallery); Rima for the W.H. Hudson memorial, Hyde Park (1925); The Visitation, Tate Gallery (1926); Night and Day for St James’ underground station (1928--9); Ecce Homo, Epstein Estate (1935); Lucifer (1945), in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Christ in Majesty, Llandaff Cathedral (1953); St Michael, Coventry Cathedral (1959). Exhibitions include Leicester Galleries, London from 1917; Temple Newsam, Leeds (1942); Tate Gallery, London (1952); Memorial Exhibitions -- Edinburgh Festival (1961), Tate Gallery (1961). DCL degree (Oxford University) (1953); KBE (1954).

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