Jacob Epstein

Jacob Epstein was a pivotal member of the London avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century. As a collector, he increased the visibility of Indigenous arts of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific.

Born to parents of Eastern European Jewish descent, Epstein studied painting and sculpture in New York and Paris before relocating permanently to London in 1905. Two commissions brought him public attention: in 1908, the facade for the newly constructed British Medical Association in London and, in 1913, the tomb for Oscar Wilde in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. While preparing the Wilde commission, Epstein established relationships with Constantin Brancusi and Amedeo Modigliani, among others in the Montmartre circle of avant-garde artists. Epstein acquired a drawing from Modigliani, Caryatid (1913-14, Garman Ryan Collection, the New Art Gallery Walsall, United Kingdom), which remained in his possession until his death.

While in London, Epstein cultivated an interest in ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art, spurred by his visits to the British Museum. While studying in Paris, Epstein expanded his interest to the arts of Africa and Oceania, which he saw in the collections of artists in Montmartre, the dealers Joseph Brummer and Paul Guillaume, and at the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro. He became a devoted collector during the interwar period, known for his reckless bidding at auctions facilitated by such Parisian dealers as Ernest Ascher, Louis Carré, and Charles Ratton.

Returning to London in 1913, Epstein quickly affiliated himself with Wyndham Lewis and other artists interested in Cubism, as well as the philosopher T. E. Hulme and the poet Ezra Pound. That same year, he cofounded the London Group, an artist cooperative that offered exhibition venues to avant-garde artists in the United Kingdom, including members of the Camden Town Group (Harold Gilman, Sylvia Gosse, Wyndham Lewis), Bloomsbury Group (Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant), and the Vorticists (Malcolm Arbuthnot, Jessica Stewart Dismorr, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, William Roberts, Helen Saunders). Epstein exhibited his famous work The Rock Drill in the London Group’s inaugural show at the Goupil Gallery in 1915. Years later, he would disavow the sculpture, which included the found object of its title, as part of a larger rejection of technology by artists following the First World War, and transform it into Torso in Metal from ‘The Rock Drill’ (Tate Modern, London).

Epstein was conscripted for combat duty in the British Armed Forces in 1917, and dishonorably discharged two years later. He continued working as an artist and collecting the work of European artists until 1939, at which point, in order to pay his income taxes, he sold the majority of his paintings to a friend in a private sale. As such, no information exists about the contents of Epstein’s European art collection. During the Second World War, Epstein undertook several commissions for the War Artists' Advisory Committee.

In 1953, Epstein received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford, and in 1954 he was knighted by the Queen of England. Two years later, he received his last public commission for the Trades Union Congress headquarters in London; he died in 1958 on the same day that he completed the project. His collection of nearly 350 African and Oceanic artworks was sold at auction in 1960 by the Arts Council of Great Britain following his death.