Sir Jacob Epstein 1880-1959

London, Twenty-One Gallery, Drawings & Sculpture by Jacob Epstein, December 1913 - January 1914, nos.9 and 3 (double entry) (another cast);
London, Leicester Galleries, The Sculpture of Jacob Epstein, February - March 1917, no.17 (another cast);
Leeds, City Art Gallery, Jacob Epstein & Matthew Smith, July – September 1942, no.4 (another cast);
London, The Arts Council, Epstein, 1961, no.3 (another cast);
New Jersey, Farleigh Dickinson University, The Works of Sir Jacob Epstein from the Collection of Mr. Edward P. Schinman, 1967, illustrated in catalogue p.60 (another cast);
London, Hayward Gallery, Pioneers of Modern Sculpture, 20^th July – 23^rd September 1975, cat.no.97, illustrated p.73 (another cast);
Birmingham, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Rebel Angel: Sculpture and Watercolours by Sir Jacob Epstein, October – November 1980, no.3, illustrated (another cast);
Leeds, City Art Gallery, Jacob Epstein: Sculpture & Drawings, 16^th April – 21^st June 1987, cat.no.S8, illustrated pp.134-135, (another cast); and travelling to London, Whitechapel Art Gallery.  

Bernard Van Dieren, Epstein, John Lane, London, 1920, illustrated plate XIV;
R.Black, The Art of Jacob Epstein, World Publishing Company, New York & Cleveland, 1942, no.2, pl.87;
Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein, Sculptor, Faber and Faber, London, 1963, pp.23, 82, 88, 249 & 328, illustrated nos.16-17, p.22 (another cast);
B.L.Reid, The Man from New York: John Quinn and his Friends, OUP, New York, 1968, p.191;
E.P. and B.A. Schinman (ed.), Jacob Epstein: A Catalogue of the Collection of Edward P. Schinman, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970, illustrated p.94 (another cast);
Evelyn Silber, The Sculpture of Jacob Epstein, Phaidon, London, 1986, no.8, illustrated p.120;
June Rose, Daemons and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein, Constable, London, 2002, pp. 48, 62 & 85, illustrated on front cover (another cast).

Conceived in 1907 and cast in an edition of 9, the present work is the first of three portrait heads that Epstein produced of Romilly John (1906 -1986) as a child. Epstein had moved from Paris to London in 1905 and enjoyed a good deal of early support and encouragement from Augustus John in the face of considerable opposition elsewhere. Deviating dramatically from the prevailing classicism of British sculpture and the 'suave lyricism' of the likes of Sir George Frampton and Alfred Dury, Epstein's approach was instead one of a pared down simplification of form that took its inspiration from 'primitive' sculpture, combined with his own highly developed feeling for character and mood. As Evelyn Silber has noted of the 1907 bronze, 'This is scarcely a portrait; Augustus John's son is the pretext for a far broader sculptural statement. The smooth cap is a critique on the fussily decorative, pseudo-historical headdresses - turbans, caps and helmets - favoured by Victorian sculptors... Epstein strips away this decorative irrelevance to emphasise the essential structure and mass of the head, while at the same time expoiting the inherent qulities of bronze, without recourse to the ivory and semi-precious stones favoured by Frampton.' (op.cit., p.15) Epstein's early bronze was later used by both Epstein, and his new friend Eric Gill, as the starting point for their respective carved heads of 1909-10 of Romilly, both exhibited at the Allied Artist's Association in July 1910 and again at the National Portrait Gallery in 1911.