‘My language is form, in all its variety and astonishing wealth, and that is my native language.’
(Jacob Epstein)

In the main hall of Tate Britain, officially known as the Duveen Gallery, they’ve dusted off 20 or so pieces by British sculptor and modernist pioneer Jacob Epstein to form a lovely display. Some of the large carved stone sculptures fit perfectly into the hall which is constructed of stone columns and panels, which complement Epstein’s bigger stone carvings.

There are (maybe) three aspects to Epstein’s work:

1. Heroic modernism

In the heroic age of modernism, the pioneering 1910s, Epstein’s radically angular vision climaxed in The Rock Drill from 1913, a science fiction vision of the machine age, or the angular and stylised sculpture for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Paris (1913).

During this period he was a key figure in the ‘direct carving’ movement in Britain. This approach emphasised a ‘truth to materials’, in which sculptors worked directly with the stone, using its natural qualities rather than making wax or clay models first. He was influenced by the techniques and imagery used in ancient Egyptian, West African and Oceanic carvings, which he collected.

2. Stone carvings

Later, in the ’20s and ’30s, he made a series of monumental stone carvings with religious overtones, pagan gods or characters from the Bible, whose monumental blocky scale and composition influenced a younger generation of British sculptors.

3. Bronze busts

Throughout his career he made bronze portrait busts in a completely different style. By contrast with the large angular, slab-like carvings, the busts are more or less life-size, and fiddly, made of knobs and whorls and excrescences where you can almost feel the fingers and thumbs shaping the root material. Nonetheless they’re often good likenesses, and provided Epstein with a regular income from members of elite families and leading figures in the arts who paid for these commissions. The display includes busts of Albert Einstein, the Labour politician Nye Bevin, writer Somerset Maugham, actor Iris Beerbohm Tree and so on.

Gallery

The following text in italics is direct from the curators – why reinvent the wheel?

Rock Drill (1913)

Epstein began this sculpture in a period when artists in the Vorticist and Futurist movements were exploring the dynamic artistic potential of mechanisation. The original sculpture, first exhibited alongside works by Vorticist artists at the London Group exhibition of 1915, was a plaster figure mounted on top of a commercial rock drill.

He later described it as ‘a machine-like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny… the armed sinister figure of today and tomorrow.’ After the machines of the First World War killed millions of people, Epstein removed the drill, cut the figure down at the waist and chopped off the left hand and right arm and cast it in bronze. This newly truncated figure now looks more vulnerable, a victim rather than a perpetrator of violence.

Torso in Metal from The Rock Drill (1913 to 1914) by Jacob Epstein. Tate © The Estate of Jacob Epstein (photo by the author)

This may be my favourite work of art of all time. It has the geometric angularity of early modernism, highly infused with a Vorticist, machine-age aesthetic, probably my favourite art movement. But more than that, its hard angularity anticipates the unforgiving cruelty and atrocity of the world to come, the world unleashed by the Great War, the great century of catastrophe. And its alien appearance makes it the godfather to almost all the really serious, minatory science fiction of the last century. It is spookily, tragically prophetic. And yet it gives off hard waves of psychic energy. It symbolises the science and technology which have simultaneously liberated us and threaten to annihilate us.

Here’s a photo of what it originally looked like, Epstein’s original conception atop an actual pneumatic drill, which transport it to a whole new level of alien apparition. 1913 when John Singer Sargent was still painting pictures of rich American ladies in their boudoirs!

Doves

A pair of doves, a traditional symbol of love. The two birds are mating, reflecting Epstein’s interest in exploring sexuality and procreation. He simplifies the forms into bold geometric shapes, influenced by the experimental work of sculptor Constantin Brancusi, whom he had met in Paris in 1912 when he was working on Oscar Wilde’s tomb. Epstein made three sculptures on this theme. This version, the third, is the most abstract of the three.

Doves by Jacob Epstein (1914-15) Tate © The Estate of Jacob Epstein (photo by the author)

Jacob and the Angel (1940-1)

Epstein depicts a passage from the Biblical Book of Genesis in alabaster.

In the Bible story Jacob wrestles through the night with an unknown attacker, who eventually overpowers him. In the morning, he realises he has been fighting God and his own conscience. Epstein shows Jacob exhausted, being held up by an angel. The interaction of the figures is ambiguous, both an intimate embrace and the aftermath of a struggle.

Epstein carved several monumental works on biblical subjects in alabaster in the 1930s and 1940s. They all caused controversy because of their use of simplified figural forms and sexual explicitness to depict religious subject matter. In each, Epstein allowed the shape of the stone block to define the figure. He wrote that his intention was to explore ‘the discipline of the simplification of forms, unity of design, and co-ordination of masses.’

Jacob and the Angel by Jacob Epstein (1940 to 1941) Tate © The Estate of Jacob Epstein (photo by the author)

Einstein

The physicist Albert Einstein fled Germany for Britain in July 1933. He was staying at a refugee camp in North Norfolk when Epstein made this portrait. Epstein wrote about his week of sittings with Einstein, which he enjoyed: ‘His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous, and the profound. This was a combination that delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt.’

Epstein had to work quickly on the bust, which was not fully finished when the sittings ended, because in October Einstein left for the US to take up a post at Princeton University.

Einstein by Epstein (1933) at Tate © The Estate of Jacob Epstein (photo by the author)

Conclusion

If you’re going to see the fabulous Lee Miller exhibition which is just off the central atrium, factor in 15 or 20 extra minutes to take in this display. Most of the bronze busts did nothing for me, whereas the half dozen or so Modernist works are bracing and inspiring, the alabaster Jacob hugely impressive, and I spent 4 or 5 minutes just absorbing the energy, inspiration and horror of the amazing Rock Drill.

Related links

• The Joseph Epstein display in Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries (i.e. the central atrium) continues until 30 March 2026

Related reviews

• Tate Britain reviews
• The Perfect Theory by Pedro G. Ferreira (2014) [about Einstein’s theory of relativity]
• Oscar Wilde reviews
• Somerset Maugham reviews