Art: Epstein

In a discreet and inaccessible nook of Hyde Park, London, Premier Stanley Baldwin unveiled, last week, a memorial to Naturalist W. H. Hudson by Sculptor Jacob Epstein. As the sheet that swaddled the work was drawn aside, a murmer of horror went up from the onlookers, many of whom, it was noticed, were old men—dignified seigneurs, others whose peaked countenances and obvious irascibility made it clear that they could come under no definition other than that of curmudgeon. They aimed trembling fingers at a panel of the memorial which was said to represent Rima, bird-nymph, a character in Hudson’s Green Mansions. Next morning, letters appeared in the press denouncing the plaque as an “atrocity,” calling upon the Government to remove it, hinting that “there were those” who would subscribe the necessary funds. Tory critics wrote venomous articles excoriating Epstein. They pointed out that, while the nymph in Green Mansions had been a creature so spiritual, that she required no other garments than cobwebs, so sensitive that she could understand the language of the birds, Epstein had represented her as a “superstitious, brutal-looking figure, with a queer anatomy.” They viewed with alarm her orgiastic pose, her huge hands, her Babylonian visage. Unruffled,Epstein replied: “I am quite content with my own work and do not seek the approval of others. … It is not surprising that I have some critics in the press. There were quite a number of old gentlemen in the party while I was at work on the panel, criticizing it so much that my meditations were disturbed.”

So quoth Jacob Epstein, “American-born Polish Jew.” Now a man of 45, he has had a stormy career in Art.

In 1910, he was commissioned by architects to do 18 statues for a building on the Strand. He supplied 18 heroic nudes in all postures. The public screamed. Epstein remarked : “The Capital of the British Empire is so used to statues in frock coats and trousers that these struck them as brutal truth.” He was commissioned to make a monument for Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris. He furnished a “symbolic figure.” The Prefecture of Police and the cemetery authorities interfered— hung a large bronze fig leaf on the statue. A few nights later, when Epstein was sitting in the Cafe Royal, a student marched in wearing the bronze fig leaf around his neck. He made a statue Venus, “an arrangement of planes and curves,” also heroic —10 or 12 ft. high. It was exhibited in the Leicester Galleries, London, and for weeks people gathered in front of it and roared with laughter. In 1920, at the same galleries, he exhibited a statue called The Risen Christ. A well-known British cleric exclaimed: “I call it positively wicked and insulting to perpetrate such a travesty.” Said Mr. Epstein: “The figure I have produced appeals to me as one of infinite pity, looking upon the world of sorrow with deep compassion.” It had a pug nose, pigeon toes, thick lips.