THE FOUNDLING MUSEUM

Published to accompany the exhibition Sir : Babies and at the Foundling Museum, SIR JACOB EPSTEIN (30 January – 10 May 2015)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, BABIES AND BLOOMSBURY electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the copyright holders and publisher.

ISBN 978-0-9551808-8-0

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed by Joe Ewart, Society Printed by Lamport Gilbert Ltd, Reading, Berkshire Published by The Foundling Museum, London

Copyright © The Foundling Museum, 2015 Texts © 2015 the authors

The Foundling Museum has made every effort to identify copyright holders of all illustrations and to obtain permission to include images in this book.

Front cover: Sir Jacob Epstein, Baby asleep, 1904, bronze © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph © Bridgeman Images/ Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) UK

Back cover: Lamb’s Conduit Street looking north in 1923, taken from Brian Girling’s Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia Through Time, 2012

The exhibition is supported by The Foundation and individual donors. This publication was made possible thanks to the gift of one individual donor.

Edited by Gill Hedley To work from a child seemed to me DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD the only work worth doing, and I was prepared to go for the rest of my life It is remarkable to think that when Jacob Epstein lived across the street looking at Peggy Jean, and making new from the gates of the Founding Hospital – now the entrance to Coram’s studies of her ... I regret that I have not Fields playground – the original eighteenth-century building was still in operation. Epstein witnessed the last two decades of the Hospital’s done more children, and I plan some day London life, seeing and hearing the children in its care and observing its daily routines. In the year that Epstein left his Guilford Street home in to do only children. I think I should be Bloomsbury, the Hospital relocated to Redhill and the Georgian building quite content with that, and not bother was later torn down. about the grown-ups at all. Epstein was a pioneer of modern and his large-scale public works were frequently the subject of controversy. The years he spent in Bloomsbury mark an important phase in his career as he turned from abstraction to figuration. Elin Morgan examines this transitional period in Jacob Epstein, Let There Be Sculpture: An Autobiography, 1940 her essay A Complicated Family Portrait and reflects on his unconventional family life. Epstein fathered five children, three daughters and two sons, from three different extra-marital relationships. Gill Hedley further explores these relationships in her essay, In Bloomsbury, and considers Epstein’s bronze portraits of children as well as his long association with this area of London. Taking a personal view of Epstein’s work, Agi Katz considers his reputation as an artist in Jacob Epstein’s legacy: A personal view.

We would like to thank all those who have been involved in this project. We are particularly grateful to Gill Hedley for proposing this exhibition, which reflects themes at the heart of the Foundling Hospital story, namely art, children and place. Her passion for the subject and curatorial diligence has made the process of developing this exhibition a delightful one.

We would also like to thank three Epstein experts who have been very generous with their time and knowledge. Curatorial Advisor Agi Katz provided invaluable support across many aspects of the exhibition, particularly in enabling us to secure loans of exceptional quality and variety. Dr Evelyn Silber advised on the selection of works and Elin Morgan helped us navigate the Epstein archives.

Finally, we would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all those institutions and individuals who agreed to lend works. Sir Jacob Epstein:

6 7 (1880-1959) *Peggy Jean married a second time, and became Peggy Jean Lewis ** ’s first child with Epstein, a baby daughter born in 1922, died when a few months old * E P S J A C T EIN O Babies and Bloomsbury would not have been possible without them. B Particular thanks go to Julie Brown and her colleagues at the New Art m Gallery for their help in the early stages of planning. We are also 1) MARGARET (1873-1947) DUNLOP

grateful to The Henry Moore Foundation and to individual donors for m. 1906 their significant support of this exhibition, including a donor who wishes to E P S remain anonymous whose generous gift enabled this publication. (1918-2010) P E J EAN T EIN (1939-) GG LEDA

Caro Howell Y

** DOROTHY LINDSELL- (1895-1957) STEWART

Director, The Foundling Museum ‘MEUM’ m (1941-1989) HORNSTEIN NORMAN IAN m. 1939 G ARMAN (1924-54) TH EO m 2) KATHLEEN

AMN* GARMAN (1901-79) m. 1955 (1926-2011) G ARMAN K I TT Y (1948-) ANN m ANNABEL (1951-) 1) m. 1948 (1967-) EVE m GODLEY WYNNE 2) HON m. 1955

G ARMAN (1929-54) ES TH ER

(1934-2009) E P S J A CK IE T EIN NICHOLAS (1912-92) ISABEL m WARREN ISABEL m. 1986

8 IN BLOOMSBURY Gil Hedley

Antony Gormley said in 2009 that Epstein ‘was solely responsible for the arrival of , and in particular for bringing direct carving to Britain.’ 1

Since Jacob Epstein’s first public commission in London in 1908, he had been criticised, often viciously, for his monumental avant-garde sculpture. Throughout his career he also consistently produced lyrical, intimate portraits of his wife, his lovers and their children.

Epstein lived for many years in Bloomsbury but was never part of the literary, painterly often characterised as people who ‘lived in squares, moved in circles and loved in triangles.’ This might also serve as a description of Epstein’s own complex family life. He knew Bloomsbury for over twenty years. It was where he first stayed in London, had a series of studios and stores, a family home and where his first children were born. It was also the location of the whose collections of ancient and non-European sculpture were his early inspiration.

Jacob Epstein was born in 1880, the second son of a businessman Max Epstein and his wife Mary Solomon who were middle-class, Orthodox Russian-Polish Jewish refugees in New York. He was the third of eight surviving children and his interest in drawing came from long periods of enforced rest due to pleurisy.

Aged 22, Epstein moved to to study art formally in academies and then independently, regularly visiting museums. In 1904, he made a brief exploratory trip to London and stayed in Bloomsbury visiting more museums, above all the British Museum.

When thinking of leaving Paris, I determined to go to London and see if I could settle down and work there. My first impressions of the English were of a people with easy and natural manners and great courtesy; and a visit to the British Museum settled the matter for me.2

Fig 1: Guilford Street – the gates of the Foundling Hospital can just be seen to the left of the His main reason for discovering whether he could settle in London was a image with Epstein’s house on the right, photograph, c.1925, courtesy Brian Girling love affair. In Paris in 1903 he met and fell in love with Margaret Williams, a

10 11 The Florentines had a special love of children. From Donatello’s mad incarnations of robust vitality, to graceful Verrocchio’s…

To work from a child the sculptor has to have endless patience. He must wait and observe, and observe and wait. The small forms, so seemingly simple, are in reality so subtle, and the hunting of the form is an occupation that is at once tantalizing and fascinating.

This influence can also be seen in his head of Augustus John’s infant son Romilly, 1907. The child’s fashionable pageboy haircut is smoothed like an archaic helmet, lending him a princely air. (fig 3)

Left: Fig 2: Baby awake, c.1904, bronze, Epstein returned to New York briefly in June 1905, presumably trying to © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, make a decision about Margaret, but returned to her and to where photograph ©The New Art Gallery Walsall he became a naturalised citizen in 1910. The Epsteins often moved home Above: Fig 3: Romilly John, 1907, in these difficult early years but Epstein always kept some premises for his bronze, © The estate of Sir Jacob work in Bloomsbury. In 1916 the Epsteins finally made a home at 23, Guilford Epstein, photograph © E Silber Street, opposite the gates of the Foundling Hospital, for twelve years.

In Bohemia in London Arthur Ransome described a sculptor’s wedding, Scot seven years his senior, still married to another man. Margaret Dunlop the year after that of his friends the Epsteins. While the book is fiction, and Thomas Williams (she worked for the GPO, he was a London County not reportage, references to a flat in the Gray’s Inn Road, a Bloomsbury Council clerk) had married in Holborn in 1896 and lived in Bloomsbury, at restaurant and descriptions of gaiety do ring true: ‘it was not genteel; it was 49, Clovelly Mansions on the Gray’s Inn Road. Epstein stayed with them on perhaps a little vulgar; but it was tremendously genuine.’ his reconnaissance visit. Epstein became notorious in 1908 when a press scandal arose over the Thomas Williams filed for divorce in 1905 after Margaret moved into an powerful figures he created for the British Medical Association building artists’ studio block, between the Road and the King’s Road, with in the Strand. These personifications of maternity, infancy and other Epstein. La vie bohème began there for them as a couple on 5 November stages of life were 40 feet high, largely nude, and such naturalism caused 1905 when she left a letter for her husband (quoted here for the first time) a powerful controversy in the press. One particularly striking work showed saying ‘I am going to Jacob Epstein, I feel myself drawn away by a power I an old woman carrying a child, neither nativity nor pietà, but a powerful cannot resist.’ 3 They wed as soon as the divorce was finalised in 1906 and female statement. their remarkable marriage lasted until her death over 40 years later. In 1914, set up the Rebel Art Centre at 38, Great When Epstein left Paris for England in early 1905 he brought little work Ormond Street and its Vorticist journal Blast first appeared in July. While with him, probably only a folio of drawings and possibly two life-sized Epstein was not a signatory to its manifesto, his most experimental bronze of new-born babies. (front cover, fig 2) If this seems an and challenging modernist work – Rock Drill, 1913-15 – is considered its unusual subject for such a young artist, created when he was only about epitome and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and saw it in 1913 at 23, they reflect his interest in Renaissance sculpture, which he had seen for Epstein’s studio in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Other places for work included the first time in Paris: the mews behind Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street), Great James’s

12 13 Street and 42, Emerald Street, where he had a studio from January 1914 until September 1920.

An important Bloomsbury institution, The Poetry Bookshop at 35, Devonshire Street, was created by Epstein’s friend and landlord Harold Monro in 1913. The Bookshop also published poetry by living poets and several poets actually made their home there. The atmosphere was friendly and warm and the shop’s bestsellers were hand-coloured rhyme sheets for children. There was also Cameo Corner, a jeweller’s on New Oxford Street, later on , whose owner, Moshe Oyved, collected and also sold work by Epstein. The area provided both intellectual companionship and local colour:

Often in Bloomsbury, where I live, I see an old, bareheaded, bearded Left: Fig 4: Meum Stewart, ‘Mask’, 1918, bronze, © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph man with a hand organ. His savage apostle’s head attracts my attention. © Private collection He turns and says, “Take another look!” I ask him to sit for me, and he Above: Fig 5: Mrs Epstein in mantilla, 1918, bronze, consents. He sits, a silent character, revealing only that he had been in © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph the Army on service in India. © Bridgeman Images/Tyne and Wear Museums

He is determined to keep out of the workhouse, and is glad of the opportunity of making a little extra. His head is bronzed with his outdoor the Leicester Galleries which finally brought him some measure of critical life, and I suspect he is a gypsy. I like his rugged, defiant character, and I and financial success. However, he also suffered from the pressure of a love think of doing a life-size figure of him, or of using him for a group. I am affair begun sometime around 1916 with a , Dorothy Lindsell-Stewart planning a “Descent from the Cross.” I never carry out this plan, and Old (fig 4) In February 1918 Meum (as she was always known) became pregnant Smith disappears from Bloomsbury. with Epstein’s first child. Margaret travelled to visit Epstein in his camp and, as she was never able to have children, a decision was made that the baby The Epstein family home in Guilford Street was always full of visitors, would be brought up as hers. Epstein was invalided out of the army that models and those who stayed much longer. summer and Peggy Jean Epstein, named after her adopted mother who was known as Peggy, was born in Bloomsbury a fortnight before the Armistice. The front ground-floor room was their sitting room and, as far as I can remember, the furniture consisted only of a table and some chairs – also In the same year, Epstein made a remarkable portrait of his wife, her head innumerable saucers with dregs of tea in them or mountains of cigarette covered by a lace mantilla and her eyes cast down, the conventions of a ends. Behind double-doors was their bedroom in which a large and Madonna with a gaze both of maternal love and acceptance. He wrote: often unmade bed could be seen. On one occasion the bedclothes were pulled back in place to conceal a laid breakfast tray being kept warm for This bust, I think, is one of my bravest ... and ... one of my most beautiful someone who was coming to breakfast. The first, or drawing-room, floor busts. This work was unhurried and brooded over, and the drapery was was Epstein’s studio. 4 worked with great care. The lines, all running downwards like the rills of a , are essential to the effect of the bust and help to express its Epstein had a breakdown in 1917 while training as a private in the Jewish innermost meaning. I think of this bust as a crowning piece, and I place it 38th battalion of the , just after his second one-man show at with any work I have done. (fig 5)

14 15 Soho, where Kathleen met Epstein who asked her to pose for him. In 1921, they became lovers. Margaret, fully aware and tolerant of previous affairs, sensed that this was a more serious matter and in the summer of 1923, invited Kathleen to Guilford Street. Margaret shot Kathleen in the shoulder with a pearl-handled pistol, hidden in her skirts. Epstein paid Kathleen’s hospital bills and persuaded her not to press charges to avoid a public scandal.

The relationship between Kathleen and Epstein continued in spite of Margaret’s best attempts to stop it. He wrote to Kathleen ‘How I wish we were together you and I in our little place. How happy I would be beyond words and all expression in words.’ 5 Fig 6: Ninth portrait of Peggy Jean (Laughing), 1921, bronze, © The estate Kathleen and Epstein remained together and had three surviving children: of Sir Jacob Epstein, Theo(dore), also given the name Jacob, in 1924, Kathleen, known as Kitty, photograph © Bridgeman Images/Leeds Museums in 1926 and Esther in 1929. A baby daughter lived only a few months in late and Galleries (Leeds Art 1922, not long before the shooting episode. Epstein’s name is not on their Gallery) UK birth certificates and they took their mother’s surname of Garman. Kitty and Esther were sent to live in the country while Theo, his mother and aunt lived in the studio in Regent’s Square. The boy was never sculpted by his father. Epstein found a new source of energy and inspiration in his baby daughter and made many portraits of her throughout her childhood: Epstein went most evenings from Guilford Street to Regent’s Square - a ten minute stroll past the Foundling Hospital. (fig 7) To a modern mind I never tired of watching her, and to watch her was, for me, to work from there is an irony, at least, in this walk past a building, so familiar to him, her. To make studies in clay of all her moods; and when she tired and fell in which some 400 children lived, given up by their parents. But Epstein asleep, there was something new to do, charming and complete. To work clearly doted on children and created some of his most successful from a child seemed to me the only work worth doing, and I was prepared works with them as subjects. It is a matter of regret that he did not make to go for the rest of my life looking at Peggy Jean, and making new studies sketches of any of his small Foundling neighbours. of her… (fig 6) The household remained complicated. For about ten years, an Indian By the time Peggy Jean was a toddler, Epstein had begun a serious and model, Sunita Devi c.1897-1932 (whose real name was Anima Peerbhoy) long-term love affair which would finally end in marriage decades later. and her young son Enver lived with them. Epstein drew and sculpted them many times and they were the models for his Madonna and Child, In 1919 Kathleen Garman, aged eighteen, and her sister Mary ran away 1927, though Epstein had great difficulty getting Enver to stand still. That from home in the West Midlands to London. Kathleen got a job at year the Epsteins made a family trip to New York, and Enver was left Harrods, helping with delivery-van horses and also worked as an artist’s behind only at the last moment. model; Mary drove a Lyons delivery van. Shocked by their behaviour, their father eventually decided it was best to support them. They rented Around this time, Peggy Jean, about nine, injured her eye with some metal a studio apartment at 13, Regent Square, Bloomsbury, and enrolled in a debris and Epstein created one of his most tender but objective portraits. private art school. They visited nightclubs, including The Harlequin in (fig 11) A critic remarked:

16 17 Fig 8: Jackie with top, undated, pencil on paper, © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph © The New Art Gallery Fig 7: The Foundling Hospital, c.1920s, courtesy Coram Walsall

The modern sculptors regard The Sick Child as a masterpiece but not bedroom in Hyde Park Gate. as a work of sculpture. They regard it as a pictorial masterpiece of the character of a genre portrait by Rembrandt. 6 later became a muse to many artists including and Francis Bacon, and married three times: the journalist The failure to end the affair with Kathleen may have lain behind the Sefton Delmer and composers and . decision to leave Bloomsbury and the busy, ramshackle house. By 1928, Her portrait by Epstein of 1933 is probably the most powerful and erotic the family was living in greater style at 18, Hyde Park Gate, a few doors portrayal of any of his lovers. away from where Virginia Woolf was born. Kathleen moved to Chelsea, remaining in Bohemia, while the Epsteins lived in the elegance appropriate Jackie (Jacob) who, like his half-sister Peggy Jean, bore his father’s to a respected portrait sculptor. surname, became a racing driver. His portraits by Epstein have an electric energy and the relationship between father and son seems to echo the The Foundling Hospital was demolished in 1928. delight he had shown fifteen years previously when he had enjoyed daily contact with his first child: More babies ... the child cannot sit still, and to compel a child to be quiet is at once Margaret continued in her attempts to divert her husband’s attentions and to destroy the spontaneity and charm which lie in its frank and natural introduced him to a young art student Isabel Nicholas who modelled for expressions. Yet I have attempted time and time this most difficult him. They became lovers about 1932 when she was twenty and had a son, subject for sculpture ... I know I have by no means exhausted the subject. Jackie. Margaret brought him up as her own child. (fig 8) Peggy Jean was by now fourteen and when Isabel first joined the household, they shared a My drawings of Jackie present a period of my life and mark out, through

18 19 drawings, a plastic expression I am proud of. To have captured the the heart of The New Art Gallery Walsall, near her family home. fugitive and endless expressions and changes of movement of a child has been a rare experience. Epstein’s final and most permanent link with Bloomsbury came shortly before he died in 1959. One of his last works was a memorial to the dead Peggy Jean attended Dartington School (at the same time as Lucian trade unionists of both world wars and it was installed at the Trades Union Freud) and later moved to America. Peggy Jean married twice, and her Congress headquarters in in 1958. This monumental daughter Leda and son Ian were both modelled by their grandfather. Kitty pietà might echo the recent tragic losses of Theo and Esther but certainly Garman had two daughters, Ann and Annabel, with her husband Lucian reflects the lifelong importance to him of pre-classical and non-European Freud and they also sat for mischievous and captivating portraits. sculpture which he began to study 50 years previously at the British Museum, close to his Bloomsbury home. Epstein commented that ‘Children I love to do, but not at the command of their parents. They likewise want to see them as angels with wings on, and not just lovely and charming, or roguish and capricious.’ Nonetheless NOTES Epstein responded very successfully to commissions of young children – 1 ‘Antony Gormley’s Seminal Sculpture: Jacob notably those of , the American singer and black activist who Epstein’s Rock Drill’, The Essay, BBC Radio 3, sang lullabies to Peggy Jean, and James Mason, the British film star. The 15 June 2009 Duke of Devonshire (one of Lucian Freud’s patrons) commissioned a head 2 of his three year-old daughter and the Duchess wrote: All quotations are, unless otherwise stated, from Jacob Epstein, Let there be sculpture: an autobiography, New York, 1940 They had to go every day for two hours for 14 days so Diddy [the nanny] 3 & Sir Jacob became terrific friends & Diddy said ‘I think Sir Jacob’s fallen England & Wales, Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1911, copyright The National Archives for me – he likes a ton weight.’ 7 4 Viva King, The Weeping and the Laughter, Epstein’s enduring reputation depends on a series of monumental London, 1976 sculptures which attracted calumny early in his career and public 5 Quoted in Cressida Connolly, The Rare distinction later in life and today. He returned often to the subject of and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans, woman, as a lover, a symbol of maternity, as the Virgin or in old age, always London, 2004 expressively and experimentally. Childhood – infancy to adolescence – 6 Reginald H. Wilenski, The Meaning of was his other preoccupation: , London, 1932

I regret that I have not done more children, and I plan someday to do 7 Charlotte Mosley, edited, In Tearing Haste: only children. I think I should be quite content with that, and not bother Letters between Patrick Leigh Fermor and Deborah Devonshire, London, 2010 about the grownups at all. I would love to fill my studio with studies of children. This is a fancy, a dream of mine; but naturally I must sometimes turn to and earn a living like other persons.

Margaret Epstein died in 1947. Theo and Esther Garman both died in 1954, Overleaf: the year Epstein was knighted. He and Kathleen were married in 1955. As Fig 9: Victor, 1949, bronze, © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, his sole heir, Lady Epstein presented his original plaster casts to the Israel photograph © Bridgeman Images/Leeds Museum and helped create the which is now at Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) UK

20 21 A complicated family portrait Elin Morgan

In 1916, Jacob Epstein and his wife Margaret (also known as Peggy) moved into 23, Guilford Street, a house opposite the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury. They lived there for around twelve years, the first floor of the house serving as Epstein’s studio. 1 The sculptor’s return to London after three years spent carving in the remote village of Pett Level on the Sussex coast was a pivotal moment in his career, signalling his return to figuration and disengagement with avant-garde sculpture. 2 In 1940, Epstein reflected:

When I returned to a normal manner of working, and was so bold as again to carve and model a face with its features, the advanced critics spoke of my having “thrown up the sponge.” I was lost to the movement, I feel easy about this. 3

Epstein’s time in Bloomsbury is also highly significant in terms of his personal life. It was while he was living in Bloomsbury that his first child was born to Dorothy Lindsell-Stewart (known as Meum). He also met Kathleen Garman (who became Lady Kathleen Epstein, 27 June 1955, following the death of Margaret in 1947) with whom he had three children. 4 This essay explores Epstein’s ‘Bloomsbury period’ in terms of his professional and private life, revealing the complexities of what has been referred to as ‘a period of transition for Epstein.’ 5

Work life

While Epstein insisted that he had no regrets about returning to figuration and, more specifically, portraiture – ‘a normal manner of working’ – his persistent championing of modelling at a time when ‘to be modern was to carve, and to carve abstracted forms derived from but not dependent on the human figure’ has had a significant impact on his placement in art history. 6 In other words, Epstein’s ‘radical renunciation of abstraction’ which was concurrent with his move from Pett Level to Bloomsbury, relegated him to ‘a secondary role’ within modernist sculptural history. 7 From then on, certain commentators have argued that it is ‘more difficult […] to extract the important works from the multitude of heads and busts, many of them excellent in their way, but contributing little to contemporary sculpture.’

23 Fig 10: First (with curls), 1944, bronze © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph © Boundary Gallery

Epstein spent his mornings modelling portraits and his afternoons carving ‘great blocks of stone’. 9 However, given the modernist preoccupation with carving, Epstein’s alleged ‘sculptural schizophrenia’ (employing both techniques) was apparently unacceptable and writers have felt the need to categorise him as either a modeller or a carver. 10 So while Epstein played a key role in the reintroduction of direct carving in Britain between 1909 and 1916, and continued to carve throughout his career, he has most often been characterised as a modeller. 11

Between 1902 and 1959 Epstein made almost 400 sculpted portraits and while his busts were generally more popular, and certainly never sparked the controversy that his monumental carvings caused, opinion was divided as to whether or not Epstein’s busts constituted ‘great art’. 12 At worst, Epstein was described as ‘a photographer who worked in bronze’ who had ‘an immense talent for recording what was actually in front of his eyes. But he seldom had the visual imagination to transform the head into a self-sufficient piece of sculpture.’13 In contrast, his supporters insisted that ‘everything in his best heads becomes expressive of personality; even the hair becomes an extension of character’ such that ‘the living spirit’ of the sitter is ‘preserved with the uncanny skill of Epstein at his best.’ 14 First

24 Fig 11: Twelfth portrait of Peggy Jean (The sick child), 1928, bronze, ©The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph © Bridgeman Images/Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) UK

Portrait of Kitty (with curls), 1944 (fig 10) illustrates how Epstein sometimes accentuated the hair of his sitters such that it became ‘an extension of character.’ Arguably the most striking feature of this bust, Epstein emphasised and exaggerated Kitty’s full-bodied, tumbling locks to such an extent that her hair appears to be miraculously still growing. Clearly fascinated by the rendering of hair in sculpture, Epstein asserted: ‘I find a rhythm in the hair of each individual head that I must capture.’ 15

Epstein’s portraits were often denigrated as mere records of the sitters for posterity, ‘but rarely worthy of the name sculpture’ because they ‘deal with features not with forms.’ 16 Interestingly, however, some of his critics conceded that his sculptures of children ‘see him creating form.’ 17 Another commentator noted that ‘one often heard the remark “such a pity he [Epstein] does not stick to children”.’ 18 The Sick Child, 1928 (fig 11) has often been singled out as exemplary. 19 The Edinburgh Festival Epstein Memorial exhibition catalogue even declared that the figure is so realistic that a doctor, on first glance, was able to correctly diagnose the child’s illness as an eye infection. 20

As well as the contention that portraiture was a form of imitation rather

25 than creation, Epstein’s portraits were also seen as a lesser art form because they were associated with financial necessity. Epstein, it seemed, ‘depended for his income on commissioned portraits’ which allegedly ‘took him away from more portentous subjects.’ 21 In 1923, Epstein lamented: ‘this day that is so wonderful outside has made me wonder why I pass my life doing these portraits.’ 22 Epstein’s letters to Kathleen also reveal his frequent concerns about money and the necessity of doing portraits to earn a living. 23 Indeed, his move from Pett Level to Bloomsbury was in part motivated by how difficult it was to make a living outside London; ‘had I an income I would like to live in the country and work, but I found it impossible […] I had continually to run up to London to see if I could […] get a portrait to do.’ 24

It is important to note, however, that not all of Epstein’s portraits were commissioned; a huge proportion, and apparently his ‘best portraits’, are of family and friends and personally selected sitters. 25 Furthermore, while he complained to Kathleen about being ‘condemned’ to a lifetime of official portraiture, he also described a longing ‘to get back to doing my own work and work again from people I like to work from, that includes children.’ 26 In fact, Epstein took a great deal of pleasure in working from children throughout his career and it seems this was reciprocated. John Lade, whose four year old daughter Epstein modelled in 1951, recalled how friendly Epstein was and how children naturally liked him because he ‘respected them (more, I think, than he did many grown-ups) and he took an interest in what they had to say, and in return that child came to feel for him, I think, with very real affection.’ 27

The photograph Jacob Epstein and Portland Mason, c.1952 (fig 12) by an unknown photographer, illustrates the joy Epstein felt in being around and working from children. Epstein is shown not only studying the child’s features and replicating them with painstaking attention to detail in the clay before him, but also sharing the delight of the young girl as she plays with modelling clay. Epstein appears as both dedicated workman and kind-hearted family man.

Throughout his career, Epstein was subjected to exceptionally harsh criticism. 28 He was persistently characterised as an artist who assaulted his audience like he assaulted his materials. 29 His critics described the characteristic rough surface treatment of his bronzes as a ‘mud-pie’ finish produced via ‘a crude hit-or-miss technique.’ 30 Epstein’s sculptural technique was also likened to ‘an engineer-driver’ attempting ‘to adjust

26 Fig 12: Jacob Epstein and Portland Mason, c.1952, photographer unknown the hairspring of a watch.’ 31 In contrast, Epstein’s supporters defended his studio practice, asserting that the perception of Epstein as a ‘whirling dervish’ in the studio was ‘the meanest of all the misconceptions about his work […] Epstein’s studio, far from being a devil’s workshop in which the devil goes dancing mad, is a place of infinite care in workmanship.’ 32 The photograph of Epstein with Portland Mason seems to reflect this contention and is certainly a far cry from the contemporaneous media’s persistent defamation of Epstein as a ‘socialist’, ‘anarchist’ or ‘great sculptor who has sold his soul to the devil.’ 33

Epstein was a prolific portrait artist, even proclaimed to be ‘the greatest portrait sculptor of our time’ in 1934. 34 However, portraiture was predominantly seen as imitative and driven by financial necessity rather than as a form of creative art. Epstein’s own attitude towards portraiture fluctuated between complaining to Kathleen in private, but publically declaring that ‘I put everything I can into a portrait of any kind’ and insisting that he was content to be judged by his portrait work alone. 35 Thus, Epstein’s ethos ran contrary to critical opinion and this has affected his reputation. Pertinently, it was his move to Bloomsbury that signalled his return to figuration and portraiture.

27 Private life

Interestingly, the opposing and inconsistent opinions about the merits of Epstein’s portraiture are no less confusing and complex than his personal life. The twelve years Epstein spent living in Bloomsbury were highly significant in terms of his private life as well as professional career. When they moved into Guilford Street, Epstein and Margaret had been married for ten years. Margaret was almost eight years older than Epstein and they had no children together. 36 The exact circumstances of how and when Epstein met Meum are unknown, but between 1916 and 1918, Epstein made four sculpted portraits and numerous drawings of the beautiful, seductive young woman. 37 They began a love affair and Epstein’s first child, Peggy Jean Epstein, was born 31 October 1918. 38 Margaret seemingly stoically tolerated Epstein’s affairs – she raised two of his illegitimate children as her own. 39 Jackie Epstein, the sculptor’s youngest son was born on 12 September 1934 to Epstein and Isabel Nicholas, who had also modelled for Epstein. Margaret reportedly pretended to be much younger in order to make the lie that she was Jackie’s mother more convincing and her death certificate reflects this, stating her age as 60 instead of .74 40

For a sculptor who enjoyed being around and working from children, the birth of his first child was clearly a significant event. Interestingly, regarding the birth of Peggy Jean, the published and manuscript versions of Epstein’s autobiography differ slightly. Whereas the published version begins: ‘To have a child to work from was delightful’; the handwritten draft has a slightly different emphasis: ‘To have a child was so delightful.’ 41

Peggy Jean and Jackie were not Epstein’s only illegitimate children. After meeting Kathleen in 1921, between 1924 and 1929 they had three children together. First Portrait of Kathleen, 1921 (fig 15) was begun the morning after their first night together and clearly reflects the beauty and personality that captivated Epstein. Kathleen’s head is held high, revealing her confidence, strength and pride in her appearance. She gazes upwards in a gesture that is indicative of her intelligence and Epstein’s awe, and her lips are parted in a sensual pout. Whereas Margaret tolerated Epstein’s other affairs – and some of his mistresses, including Meum, became lifelong friends – Kathleen was different, and it seems Margaret sensed this immediately. 42 More than a fling, Kathleen became a parallel wife and Margaret did her utmost to get rid of her – she even enlisted the help of Meum to spy on the couple. 43

28 Epstein and Kathleen’s first child, Theodore (Theo), was born on 1 July 1924. Epstein’s name is noticeably absent from the birth certificate.44 Their second child, Kitty, was born on 17 August 1926, and their youngest daughter, Esther, followed in April 1929. 45 All three were brought up separately as Garmans rather than Epsteins. Writing to Cressida Connolly, author of The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans, Peggy Jean conceded:

I can tell you very little about the Garman family. My mother [Margaret Epstein, not her biological mother Meum] brought me up as a very small child to view them with fear. I did not get to know Kathleen until after my mother’s death. First I met my sister Esther, she was a delight, then I got to know Kitty […] I did not like her nearly as much as she had a chip on her shoulder about being a Garman instead of an Epstein. 46

Thus, Epstein had two very separate households to maintain, and, surprisingly, given his notorious public profile, it seems that he managed to keep his complicated family life relatively private. One newspaper article referred to Epstein’s ‘enchanting busts of [Kathleen’s] children by a previous marriage.’ 47 Furthermore, The Sphere ran an article about an exhibition of Theo’s held at the Redfern Gallery, London in 1950 which included a photograph of Epstein and Theo at the exhibition.48 Pertinently, even though the similarities in their appearance may seem unmistakeable, Theo is not referred to as Epstein’s son (fig 13). 49

It would also appear that the two households were very much kept apart. Referring to Epstein’s 1935 Leicester Galleries exhibition which showcased his carving Ecce Homo, 1934-5 and included his drawings of Jackie, Barney Hutton, Kathleen’s cousin, asserted that the exhibition had a ‘devastating consequence.’ 50 A close friend of Kathleen’s apparently went to visit her the day after the exhibition. She found Kathleen

standing at the top of the stairs, her face white with anguish. ‘Beth’ she whispered ‘I’ve just had some dreadful news. I’ve just read in the papers that the drawings of the boy are drawings of his boy, Jackie. He has had another child.’ Jackie was born in 1934. Kathleen had known nothing of it. 51

While Epstein made numerous sculpted studies of Peggy Jean and Jackie when they were babies and very young children, because they grew up separately, his first busts of Kitty and Esther were modelled when they were teenagers. Kitty recalled sitting for her father:

29 Fig 13: Epstein and Theo at the Redfern Gallery, London, The Sphere, 21 January 1950, Epstein Archive, courtesy The New Art Gallery Walsall

I was in awe of him, and I thought that one had to sit absolutely rigid and still, as one used to have to for photographs. And he said ‘oh Kitty you don’t have to keep quite still all the time you can talk to me’, and I didn’t quite know what to talk about so I began to describe my Pekinese dog or something, and I said something like that he had a funny little nose, and he [Epstein] said ‘you’ve got a funny little nose and I’m finding it very difficult!’ 52

Epstein did not model Theo at all. In fact, a drawing of Theo aged six is the only representation Epstein made of his son. It seems that Epstein and Theo had a difficult relationship. Kathleen reportedly said that being between her husband and son was ‘like being ground by a millstone’ because ‘the father had no joy in the son.’ 53

Theo developed a mental illness and died tragically young whilst he was being admitted to hospital in 1954. 54 Even more tragedy befell the family that year: nine months after Theo’s death, Esther committed suicide. Epstein wrote to Peggy Jean:

30 Esther who was so beautiful and well-loved by all committed suicide. She, it seems, was very much troubled […] by Theo’s death nearly a year ago […] She attempted to do away with herself 6 weeks ago and was saved by intensive treatment in a home where she seemed to recover her peace of mind. She came out and took a job in a bookshop with a woman friend with whom she went to live: but on the first night out in her new room she gassed herself. Kathleen is terribly upset […] At the moment one can think of nothing else and lives in a distracted and almost demented manner. 55

Theo and Esther were buried in ‘one grave in a quiet graveyard in Sussex where they were both brought up as children.’ 56

Kitty was the only child to survive Epstein and Kathleen. In 1948, she married Lucian Freud. Their tumultuous marriage was short-lived, but they had two daughters, Ann and Annabel. After her divorce from Freud in 1952, Kitty and her two daughters moved into the Epstein household and Epstein made several busts of his granddaughters. The heads from the double portrait The Sisters (Ann and Annabel Freud), 1949-50 and 1952 (fig 14), were modelled separately and put together later. The eyes, rendered as deep voids, are evocative of childhood innocence; the two sisters look out at the world as if for the first time, both astonished and bewildered.

Epstein’s personal life was unorthodox and tumultuous. Interestingly, this appears to mirror his reputation as an artist at the time. Furthermore, the dichotomy in his professional life between his carved and modelled work, is also mirrored by a schism in his private life between his life with Margaret, Peggy Jean and Jackie; and his life-long love affair with Kathleen.

Thus, the twelve years that Epstein lived in Bloomsbury were highly significant in terms of his professional and private life. Professionally, his ‘radical renunciation of abstraction’ and return to figuration and portraiture in 1916 had a huge impact on his legacy ‘relegating him to a secondary role’ in modernist sculptural history which is dominated by the abstract sculptures of Henry Moore. 57 While they were often popular amongst the general public, critically Epstein’s portraits were deemed imitative and driven by financial necessity rather than by any creative urge. However, Epstein produced huge numbers of uncommissioned busts of personally selected sitters, family and friends. Notably, it was his busts of children that seemed to unite the opinions of the public and

31 Fig 14: The sisters (Ann and Annabel Freud) (1949-50 and 1952), bronze, © The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, photograph © The New Art Gallery Walsall critics, particularly his representations of Peggy Jean, who was born in Bloomsbury. It was also while he was living in Bloomsbury that he met the love of his life, Kathleen. 58 Whereas Peggy Jean was raised as an Epstein, his three children with Kathleen were raised separately as Garmans. 59

Referred to as ‘a transitional period for Epstein’, his time in Bloomsbury is incredibly complex. His return from Pett Level in 1916 brought him physically closer to the art world and critics, but his concurrent return to figuration and portraiture marks his departure from contemporaneous art theory. The professional boundaries that Epstein traversed in being both a modeller and a carver rendered him an unorthodox outsider. His approach to relationships and family life was just as unorthodox, and the modelling/ carving divide is echoed in a schism between two households. All this began in Bloomsbury.

32 NOTES

1 Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein: Sculptor, ‘Exhibition Reviews: London, Whitechapel London, 1963, 80 Art Gallery, Jacob Epstein’, unidentified journal clipping, 553-4 2 Epstein referred to his ‘experimental pre war days’ during which he created the series 11 The 2009 Royal Academy exhibition, Wild of modernist carvings and the monumental, Thing, curated by asserted Vorticist-inspired Rock Drill, 1913-15, as ‘really that Epstein, and Henri Gaudier- child’s play […] far removed from the nature Brzeska transformed the face of British of the aesthetic experience and satisfaction sculpture between 1909 and 1916 through that sculpture should give.’ Jacob Epstein, their mutual love of stone and direct carving. Let There Be Sculpture, New York, 1940, In his obituary of Epstein, Henry Moore 49-50. declared that Epstein ‘was a modeller, rather than a carver. Henry Moore, ‘Epstein: 3 Ibid. An Appreciation’, Obituary notice in The Sunday Times, 23 August 1959, reprinted in 4 BL/3/1/4/1, Epstein Archive, The New Art Philip James (ed.), Henry Moore on Sculpture, Gallery Walsall, Marriage Certificate Jacob London, 1966, 197. Aware of the modelling Epstein and Kathleen Garman, 27 June 1955 versus carving debate, Epstein announced: ‘Personally I find the whole discussion 5 Buckle (1963), 80 entirely futile and beside the point. It is the result that matters after all. Of the two, 6 Penelope Curtis, ‘How Direct Carving Stole modelling […] seems to me to be the most the Idea of Modern British Sculpture’, genuinely creative. It is the creating of David Getsy (ed.), Sculpture and the Pursuit something out of nothing. Arnold Haskell, of a Modern Ideal in Britain c.1880 – 1930, The Sculptor Speaks: Jacob Epstein to Arnold Aldershot, 2004, 291 Haskell, London, 1931, 61

7 Anne Wagner, Mother Stone: The Vitality of 12 Haskell (1931), 62. Haskell relayed to Epstein Modern British Sculpture, London, 2005, 11 that ‘people often tell me they admire your bronzes immensely, but shake their heads 8 BL/4/1/39, Epstein Archive, The New Art when your carvings are mentioned.’ Gallery Walsall, P.A. Tomory, ‘Epstein’s Life and Work’, New Zealand Listener, 6 March 13 BL/1/3/12/150/2, Epstein Archive, The 1964, newspaper cutting, no page available New Art Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jerome Solomon to Mrs Jane O Murphy, 8 March 9 BL/4/2/4, Epstein Archive, The New Art 1976; BL/4/2/7, Epstein Archive, The New Gallery Walsall, David Baxandall, ‘Epstein Art Gallery Walsall, John Berger, ‘Epstein’s and Aspiration’, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 Pyrrhic Victory Over the Philistines’, August 1961, 9; BL/2/2/2/2, Epstein Archive, The Observer, Sunday 3 September 1961, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Kathleen newspaper cutting, no page available Garman, notebooks and diaries. Margaret Epstein organised Epstein’s appointments 14 BL/4/2/3, Epstein Archive, The New and business affairs, a task that Kathleen Art Gallery Walsall, F.M.O M’Cullough, took over following the death of Margaret in ‘Consummate Alchemy in Clay and 1947. Kathleen’s notebooks and diaries detail Bronze’, Edinburgh Evening News, Saturday Epstein’s working schedule. 19 August 1961, 8. Another commentator announced that Epstein’s ‘long series of 10 BL/1/4/54, Epstein Archive, The New Art portrait heads […] continued the tradition Gallery Walsall, Peyton Skipworth, of Rodin’s realistic portraiture, but powerful

33 and convincing as much of Rodin’s work is Retrospective Comment’, Common Ground, of this kind, the heads by Epstein carry the Vol.XIII, no.4, winter 1959, 15 art of portraiture in bronze a stage further. […] It is not claiming too much that for vivid 22 BL/1/3/2/5, Epstein Archive, The New Art and penetrating expression of character Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Epstein combined with intensity of life the portrait to Kathleen Garman on Blenheim Palace heads by Epstein have not been surpassed notepaper, ‘Sunday’ 5 December 1923. since the best period of portraiture in Also BL/1/3/1/1, Epstein Archive, The New Roman Sculpture.’ BL/4/1/12, Epstein Art Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Epstein to Kathleen Garman, 14 October Anonymous, ‘Sir Jacob Epstein 1880-1959: 1921. Writing to Kathleen from New York, The Monumental and Architectural Work of Epstein complained that as things stood he a Great Sculptor’, The Monumental Journal, felt he could be ‘condemned’ for the rest October 1959, 256 of his life to do portraits of the ‘American establishment’. 15 Haskell (1931), 62 23 BL/1/3/2/3, Epstein Archive, The New Art 16 BL/4/1/50, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Epstein Gallery Walsall, David Sylvester, ‘Living Like to Kathleen Garman, ‘Friday’ 19 February an Old Testament King’, Weekend Telegraph, 1923. In this letter Epstein described his 9 September 1992, 19 frustration with the ‘ sale’ having fallen through because he had ‘been counting 17 Ibid. on it for a sale […] later I hope to do some portraits which will pay me. I pray the sitters 18 BL/4/1/31, Epstein Archive, The New won’t be too uninteresting.’ Art Gallery Walsall, Cyril Connolly, ‘Epstein Overcomes the Philistines: Jacob Epstein, 24 Epstein (1940), 101 Sculptor by Richard Buckle’, The Sunday Times, 24 November 1963, newspaper 25 Ibid., 60 cutting, no page available 26 BL/1/3/1/1, Epstein Archive, The New Art 19 BL/4/2/3, Epstein Archive, The New Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Epstein Art Gallery Walsall, F.M.O.M’Cullough, to Kathleen Garman, 14 October 1921; ‘Consummate Alchemy in Clay and Bronze’, BL/1/3/2/16, Epstein Archive, The New Art Edinburgh Evening News, Saturday August 19, Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Epstein to 1961, 8. The Sick Child is heralded as capable Kathleen Garman, ‘July 30th’ 1955 of ‘confounding, one hopes forever, wholly unjustified criticism’ levied against Epstein 27 June Rose Archive Deposit (uncatalogued), throughout his career. BL/4/1/24/3, Epstein Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, New Walsall, Transcript of Sir Jacob Epstein: Zealand Herald, 10 January 1961, newspaper Sculptor and Humanist with a Commentary clipping, no page number available. The Sick by Peter de Francia, Broadcast 7 August 1960: Child is singled out as a ‘major sculpture’ 9.15-10pm. Lade also recalled that Epstein would give children plasticine to play with 20 Edinburgh Festival Society, Epstein: and that he would always look at their Edinburgh Society Memorial Exhibition, ex. drawings and sometimes even take them Cat., Edinburgh, 1961, no page numbers out with his own grandchildren on a Sunday to his house in Epping. 21 Connolly (1963); BL/4/1/14.1, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 28 During the early decades of the twentieth Cottie A. Burland, ‘Sir Jacob Epstein – a century, Epstein was the most maligned

34 sculptor. Henry Moore acknowledged and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein, New York, the significance of the incessant criticism 2002, 100 that Epstein was subjected to when he stated that because Epstein ‘took the 37 It has even been suggested that Meum’s brickbats’ and ‘faced the howls of derision’, stunningly beautiful features partly the younger generation of sculptors were motivated Epstein’s return to figuration. ‘spared a great deal.’ Henry Moore (1959) Gilboa Raquel, ‘Jacob Epstein’s model reprinted in Philip James (1966), 194 Meum: Unpublished drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol.148, No.1245, 29 Caricatures, limericks and newspaper December 2006, 837-840 articles ridiculing Epstein’s sculptural technique were rife throughout his career. 38 Rose (2002), 115 ‘Epstein Lampooned’ in Evelyn Silber et al, Jacob Epstein: Sculpture and Drawings, 39 Kathleen’s cousin, Barney Hutton, reported Leeds, 1989, 73-79 reproduces numerous that ‘Mrs Epstein encouraged Meum to key examples. take up a stage career and to leave her to raise Peggy Jean. CC/1/2/7/5, Epstein 30 Stanley Casson, Some Modern Sculptors, Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, copy London, 1928, 11; L.B. Powell, Jacob Epstein, of handwritten notes on Kathleen Garman London, 1932, 94 and Jacob Epstein by Barney Hutton, date unknown 31 Stanley Casson, XXth Century Sculptors, London, 1930, 111. 40 Rose (2002), 234

32 Powell (1932), 94 41 Epstein (1940) 158; BL/2/1/1/21/2, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 33 Excerpts from the press referring to Handwritten Manuscript of Epstein’s Epstein’s W.H. Hudson Memorial (1923-5), Autobiography, ‘The Studies of Peggy Jean’ Evening News 26 November 1925, The Daily Mail, 25 November 1925 and Morning Post, 42 CC/1/2/7/5, Epstein Archive, The New Art 28 November 1925 respectively. Newspaper Gallery Walsall, copy of handwritten notes cuttings from Terry Friedman’s Research on Kathleen Garman and Jacob Epstein by files, 2002.71, Henry Moore Institute Barney Hutton. Kathleen’s cousin Barney Archive, Leeds. Hutton wrote to Cressida Connolly: ‘There was never any question of Kathleen moving 34 Eric Gill, ‘letter to the Rev. John O’Connor, into the Epstein household in Guilford as 28 February 1934’, Walter Shewring (ed.), Meum had done. She remained where she Letters of Eric Gill, London, 1947, 322-323 was during the whole time as Epstein’s mistress.’ Margaret Epstein ‘hated Kathleen 35 June Rose Archive Deposit (uncatalogued), and never missed an opportunity to rub Transcript of Sir Jacob Epstein: Sculptor and home that hatred, calling her a ‘witch’ and Humanist with a Commentary by Peter de ‘dangerous’ […] With Meum in the house Francia, Broadcast 7 August 1960: 9.15-10pm; Mrs Epstein was in total control. With Epstein (1940), 61 Kathleen she was powerless to intervene and was possibly terrified of the situation.’ 36 Epstein’s biographer, June Rose, suggests that Peggy took on ‘a protective, motherly 43 Uncatalogued archive deposit, Epstein role’ with Epstein, a supposition that seems Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, supported by the fact that Peggy tolerated box of items relating to Meum, including a Epstein’s affairs and raised two of his photocopy of a letter from Margaret Epstein illegitimate children. June Rose, Demons to Meum which notes that Epstein and

35 Kathleen must have realised Meum was 53 Cressida Connolly, The Rare and the keeping an eye on their activities because Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans, London, they had started to meet elsewhere. 2004, 229

44 BL/3/3/1, Epstein Archive, The New Art 54 CC/1/5/6/5, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Birth certificate, Theodore Gallery Walsall, collection of copied Garman newspaper articles relating to the death of Theodore Garman and a later charge of 45 Rose (2002), 150 and 174 misconduct by Dr John Cowie, who treated Theo on the day of his death. 46 CC/2/3/1, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Handwritten letter from 55 CC/1/5/7/2, Epstein Archive, The New Art Peggy Jean to Cressida Connolly, 19 April Gallery Walsall, Transcript of a letter from 2001 Epstein to Peggy Jean, 13 November 1954

47 June Rose Archive Deposit (uncatalogued), 56 Ibid.; Seven years after their deaths, Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Kathleen was still visiting their graves every Walsall, copy of Colin Simpson and Lewis Saturday. BL/2/2/1/5, Epstein Archive, The Chester, ‘In 1946, Epstein completed his New Art Gallery Walsall, Kathleen Garman’s famous bronze of Churchill. It was sold diary 1961, details her visits to the cemetery in an edition of TEN. But last week: …we virtually every Saturday throughout the year. found TWELVE (and further sales are on record) Colin Simpson and Lewis Chester 57 Wagner (2005), 11 investigate’, The Sunday Times, 21 February 1971, 1-4 58 The entire series of letters from Epstein to Kathleen housed in the Epstein Archive 48 BL/4/3/7, Epstein Archive, The New Art reveal his great love and longing for Gallery Walsall, The Sphere, 21 January 1950 Kathleen. See for example BL/1/3/2/27, 27 November 1923, Epstein wrote: ‘It is now 49 Other reports also referred to Epstein as a week since I have seen you, and I’ve so Theo’s ‘patron’ or ‘distinguished sponsor’. longed to see you that my whole day and A familial connection is never mentioned night is conditioned by my great longing […] or even hinted at in any of the reports. kisses and embraces, that is what I think of’. BL/4/3/2; BL/4/3/3; BL/4/3/4 Epstein Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, newspaper 59 In his letters to Kathleen, Epstein scarcely cuttings from The New Chronicle, January ever mentions their children. Noticeably, in 1950; Evening Standard, 11 January 1950 and one example in which he does, the letter is The Scotsman, 14 January 1950 respectively signed off with love to Kitty and Esther, but not Theo. BL/1/3/2/13, Epstein Archive, The 50 CC/1/2/7/5, Epstein Archive, The New Art New Art Gallery Walsall, Letter from Jacob Gallery Walsall, copy of handwritten notes Epstein to Kathleen Garman, 27 August 1951 on Kathleen Garman and Jacob Epstein by Barney Hutton, date unknown

51 Ibid. Elin Morgan is a postgraduate at The University 52 Uncatalogued archive deposit, Epstein of Birmingham, affiliated with The New Archive, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Art Gallery Wallsall, whose PHD thesis will Transcript of recording Dealing with Dreams: examine Epstein’s portraiture as paradoxically an Introduction to The Garman Ryan the most abundant, yet overlooked aspect of Collection at The New Art Gallery Walsall his career.

36 Jacob Epstein’s legacy: A personal view Agi Katz

My enthusiasm, or rather obsession, with Epstein started in 1979 after meeting Josef Herman, who owned a wonderful bronze. He was a great admirer of Epstein and insisted that I shared this feeling with him. I did not need too much persuasion – I was hooked immediately.

I realized that Epstein did not receive the respect he deserved. His centenary in 1980 was not celebrated in any museum or private gallery in London. This shocking realisation led me to suggest an exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery in Dean Street, borrowing 37 works which needed costly security measures. With the help of the well-known designer, Abram Games, a beautiful catalogue was produced too.

Outside London, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery was the only British venue that mounted a great retrospective that year under the leadership of Evelyn Silber, author of the Complete Catalogue of Epstein’s sculpture – the most cherished book of anyone interested in Epstein. The only museum exhibition mounted in Britain since then was in 1987 at Leeds Art Gallery when Evelyn Silber was Director. It toured to London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Only my Boundary Gallery in St John’s Wood with its limited space held three Epstein exhibitions before its closure in 2011. Nonetheless many portrait bronzes, often of children, have remained loved by private collectors and are in numerous regional museum collections.

With Henry Moore, Epstein is now considered one of the finest sculptors of twentieth-century Britain. They admired each other and Henry Moore said on Epstein’s death:

He took the brickbats ... insults, he faced the howls of derision with which artists since Rembrandt have learned to become familiar with. And as far as sculpture in this century is concerned, he took them first. We have lost a great sculptor and a great man ... He transmitted that warmth, that vitality, that feeling of human being immediately.

During his lifetime Epstein had his ‘30 Years War’ following the eighteen figures he was commissioned to create for the new British Medical

39 Association’s building in the Strand, completed in 1908. The monument in Paris proved to be another work that created outrage in 1912. To work from a child the sculptor has to Rima (the commissioned W.H. Hudson Memorial) in Hyde Park in 1925, have endless patience. He must wait and described as ‘obscene’, was followed by a campaign of vilification. observe, and observe and wait. The small His Ecce Homo, 1934-5 did not sell for 25 years. Adam, 1939 was bought for a sideshow in in 1939. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Victoria and forms, so seemingly simple, are in reality Albert Museum and Tate rejected the offer of Lucifer, 1944-5, before it was finally accepted by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. so subtle, and the hunting of the form is an occupation that is at once tantalizing We still owe Epstein a great debt to make up for the ill-treatment he endured. This is why it is so important that the Foundling Museum has and fascinating. come forward with its excellent initiative of mounting this exhibition. Thanks to a generous donation, this publication could also be created.

It is hoped that the exhibition will be an inspiration to other museums to Jacob Epstein, Let There Be Sculpture: An Autobiography, 1940 follow suit to celebrate the talent of this great artist.

Overleaf: Fig 16: Jacob Epstein in his studio surrounded by portrait busts, date and photographer unknown, photograph courtesy Tate, London 2015

40 41 LIST OF WORKS

1 Baby asleep, c.1904 9 Fourth portrait of Peggy Jean bronze, 120mm high (Asleep), 1920 Leeds Museums and Galleries bronze , 200mm high (Leeds Art Gallery) Doncaster Museum Service, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough 2 Baby awake, c.1904 Council bronze, 127 mm high Private collection 10 Fifth and sixth portrait of Peggy Jean (The putti), 1920 3 Romilly John, 1907 bronze, 350mm high bronze, 200 mm high Private Collection Private collection 11 Seventh portrait of Peggy Jean 4 First portrait of Meum Lindsell (Pouting), 1920/1 Stewart, 1916 bronze, 228mm high bronze, 546 mm high Bradford Museums & Galleries Manchester City Galleries 12 Ninth portrait of Peggy Jean 5 Meum Stewart, ‘Mask’, 1918 (Laughing), 1921 bronze, 180 mm high bronze, 235 mm high Private collection Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) 6 Mrs Epstein in a mantilla, 1918 bronze, 368mm high 13 Twelfth portrait of Peggy Jean Laing Art Gallery, (The sick child), 1928 Newcastle upon Tyne bronze, 535 mm high Private collection 7 Mother and child, (Study for bas relief), 1905/7 14 Fifteenth portrait of Peggy Jean, pencil on paper, 1935 210mm × 205mm bronze, 565 mm high Private collection Gallery Oldham

8 Study for the arm and hands 15 Third portrait of Leda, c.1940 of Maternity, c.1910 bronze, 190cm high Pencil on strawboard, Private collection 405 mm × 755mm Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery)

42 43 16 Fourth portrait of Leda with 25 Jackie – a babe, 1935 Coxcomb, 1940 bronze, 185 mm high bronze, 290 mm high Private collection, Private collection c/o The New Art Gallery Walsall

17 First portrait of Kathleen Garman, 26 Third portrait of Jackie 1921 (Ragamuffin), 1939 bronze, 470 mm high bronze, 228mm high Boundary Gallery Goldmark Art, Uppingham, Rutland www.boundarygalleryonline.com www.goldmarkart.com

18 Self-portrait with beard, 1920 27 Fourth portrait of Jackie, 1949-50 bronze, 400 mm high bronze, 350 mm high Private collection Private collection

19 First portrait of Kitty (with curls), 28 Second portrait of Jackie, undated 1944 pencil on paper, 560 × 435 mm bronze, 169 mm high Goldmark Art, Uppingham, Rutland Private collection www.goldmarkart.com

20 Portrait of Theo, 1930 29 Jackie with top, undated pencil on paper, 560 × 430 mm pencil on paper, 550 × 430 mm The New Art Gallery Walsall The New Art Gallery Walsall

21 Portrait of Kitty, 1937 30 Judith Margulies, 1950 pencil on paper, 560 × 435 mm bronze, 340 mm high The New Art Gallery Walsall Private collection

22 Third portrait of Esther 31 Portland Mason (with flower), 1949 (Young Bacchus), bronze, 620 mm high 1954 Boundary Gallery bronze, 330 mm high www.boundarygalleryonline.com Private collection

23 The sisters (Ann and Annabel 32 Victor, 1949 Freud), 1949-50 and 1952, bronze, 280 mm high bronze, 185 mm high Collection of Edgar Astaire The New Art Gallery Walsall

24 Isabel, 1933 bronze, 725 mm high Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums

44 45