THE FOUNDLING MUSEUM Published to accompany the exhibition Sir Jacob Epstein: Babies and Bloomsbury at the Foundling Museum, London 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/Leeds 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 Henry Moore 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 sculpture 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 JACOB 1) MARGARET ‘MEUM’ 2) KATHLEEN ISABEL EPSTEIN m DUNLOP DOROTHY m GARMAN * NICHOLAS (1880-1959) (1873-1947) LINDSELL- (1901-79) (1912-92) m. 1906 STEWART m. 1955 (1895-1957) PEGGY NORMAN THEO KITTY 1) LUCIAN 2) HON ESTHER JACKIE ISABEL JEAN m HORNSTEIN GARMAN GARMAN m FREUD m WYNNE GARMAN EPSTEIN m WARREN EPSTEIN ** m. 1939 (1924-54) (1926-2011) m. 1948 GODLEY (1929-54) (1934-2009) m. 1986 (1918-2010) m. 1955 LEDA IAN ANN ANNABEL EVE (1939-) (1941-1989) (1948-) (1951-) (1967-) * Kathleen Garman’s first child with Epstein, a baby daughter born in 1922, died when a few months old ** Peggy Jean married a second time, and became Peggy Jean Lewis 8 would not have been possible without them. been possible not have would Caro Howell Caro Museum The Foundling Director, Babies and Bloomsbury Babies Art the New at and her colleagues Brown Julie thanks go to Particular also are planning. We of their help in the early stages for Gallery Walsall for individual donors and to Foundation Moore The Henry to grateful to of this exhibition, including a donor who wishes support their significant gift enabled this publication. whose generous anonymous remain IN BLOOMSBURY Gil Hedley Antony Gormley said in 2009 that Epstein ‘was solely responsible for the arrival of Modernism, 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 Bloomsbury Group 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 British Museum 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 Paris 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 England 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 Fulham Road and the King’s Road, with in the Strand.