Jacob Epstein, 1880-1959

By Annabel Van Grenen

Tomb of Oscar Wilde, 1914, Hopton Wood stone, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

Born in New York on the 10th November 1880, Jacob Epstein was a radical sculptor who overcame several scandals regarding his avant garde attitudes. Epstein devoted himself to direct carving, and was first introduced to it by George Gray Barnard, who taught Epstein at an Arts League class. However, his passion for the medium was solidified during a winter spent in Greenwood Lake, which he spent surrounded by the immense natural landscape and carved ice to earn some extra money. This no doubt amplified his interest in hands-on sculpture. Like other artists of the early 21st century Epstein found himself intrigued by artwork beyond the Western tradition, becoming a collector himself, which fuelled his primitivist ideas, a problematic and appropriating artistic notion which did not properly value the traditions and cultures from which it drew influence from and was popular with artistic contemporaries such as Picasso.

Epstein rebelled against the academic training that he had acquired at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and developed a style with direct carving. When creating his 18 sculptures for the British Medical Associations building on The Strand, Epstein bred scandal with his shocking nude portrayal of a mother in Maternity (1910-11), though artists demonstrated their support for him. This would prove a preamble to the uproar the artist would later provoke with his explicit depiction of the god Ammon adorning Oscar Wilde’s tomb.

Epstein was commissioned by Robert Ross at a gala in 1908 to create the tomb, which exhibits a flying stone figure ostensibly hovering next to two vertical slabs of stone. Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s 1894 poem The Sphinx and influenced by the illustrations of Charles Ricketts, a friend of Wilde, the tomb displays the Sphinx’s lover, Ammon. Elements of Assyrian and Egyptian art are evident in the style of the figure, which Epstein would have become familiar with from his frequent visits to the British museum. The horizontal thrust of the lines of the wings lead the viewer's eye to its head and create a sense of solidity. The permanent static of this figure conflicts with its action of flight, immortalising it in a space of liminality, perhaps alluding to the extinguishing of Wilde’s creative output due to his early death. Further references to Wilde rest in the inscription designed by Eric Gill, from one of Wilde’s poems The Ballad of Reading Gaol in which he calls the speaker’s mourners “outcast men”, suggesting homoerotic undertones additionally evident in the initial plans for the tomb of two naked men standing opposite one another. This is further perpetuated by Epstein's inclusion of genitalia and refusal to cover them with fig leaves or remove them. This “flying demon-angel” as Epstein defines it, remains one of his most prominent works, illustrating his passion for direct carving and non-western art. It was later ornamented with kisses from admirers of the poet, and, despite their removal due to damages in 2011, it has remained a monument of respect and remembrance for Wilde, from one artist to another.

Bibliography

Antliff, Mark. “Contagious Joy : Anarchism, Censorship and the Reception of Jacob Epstein's Tomb of Oscar Wilde , c. 1913”. The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): 195–225. 

Cork, Richard. Jacob Epstein. London : Tate Gallery Publishing ; Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1999. 

Silber, Evelyn. Jacob Epstein: sculpture and drawings. Leeds : Maney in association with the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, 1989. 

Alberge, Dalya. “Oscar Wilde's lipstick-covered Paris tomb to be protected.” The Guardian. 27 November 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/nov/27/oscar-wilde-grave-paris-cemetery.