Sir Jacob Epstein, Famous Sculptor, Dead; Come from New York’s East Side

Sir Jacob Epstein, one of the greatest sculptors of contemporary times, considered–British sculpture’s Grand Old Man, is dead. His death occurred last Wednesday night but was announced here yesterday. He was 78.

Jacob Epstein was the son of Polish-Jewish immigrant parents who had come to America. He was born on New York’s lower East Side in 1880. His first ethodical studies were at the art school of the Educational Alliance on the East Side. When his family had prospered and had moved away from the East Side, young Jacob Epstein hired a room on Hester Street so as to be near the Jewish immigrant environment and people who meant most to his at the time. A painter and illustrator as well as a sculptor, he made many drawings of Jewish celebrities, from Jacob Adler, Maurice Moscowitch and Morris Rosenfeld to Albert Elastein, Stephen S. Wise and Chaim Weizmann.

Epstein went to Paris to continue his studies in 1902, moved to London in 1905, received in 1907 a coveted commission, to execute 18 over life-sized figures for the then new British Medical Association building. He reach a British citizen in 1910, was khighted in 1954. Many of the controversies surrounding his work centered about religious themes which he executed in a manner displeasing to a Christian clergymen. Among these disputed sculptures was his statue of Christ, a little “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man). Among the many illustrations that he had done in his life was a series, considered by art critics as very powerful, illustrating the Old Testament.