EPSTEIN, JACOB ), sculptor, was born in New York, on Nov. 1o, 188o, the son of Russian-Polish parents. He received his early training at the School of the Art Students league of New York, and in 1902 he worked for a time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He went to London in 1905, and three years later obtained the commission to decorate the front of the British Medical Association building in the Strand, for which he made 18 large figures. In 1909 he carved the large sphinx for the Oscar Wilde memorial, placed in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris in 1912. His next works—the marble group "Two Doves" (1913), the marble Venus (1914) and his interest ing carvings in flenite—belong to his period of experiment in "abstract" sculpture. The life-sized bronze figure of Christ roused the storm of opposition which has signalized the appearance of each of the sculptor's most important works.
His series of bronze portraits, in which he may be said to have obtained his greatest success, began in 19o7 with the portrait of Mrs. McEvoy. This was followed by the portrait of Lord Fisher in the Imperial War museum (1915), a mask of Mrs. Jacob Epstein (1916), the half-length "Meum with a Fan" and the "Duchess of Marlborough" (1917), a bust of Mrs. Jacob Epstein (1918), Helene (1919), the "Girl from Senegal," "Kathleen" and "Jacob Kramer" in the National Gallery of British art (1921), the "Weeping Woman" and "Dolores" (1922), Ferosa Rastourmji, R. B. Cunninghame Graham and "Old Pinager" (1923), Joseph Conrad (1924), "Sunita" and Sybil Thorndike (1925). His Hud son memorial in Hyde parka panel carved with a figure of Rima —was unveiled in 1925. Exhibitions of the sculptor's works were held at the Leicester galleries, London, in 1917, 1920 and 1924. In the fall of 1927 Epstein came to America for work in New York and in other cities of the United States, and exhibits of his work were held in 1927 and 1928. His later works include two groups in Portland stone, Day and Night, on the London Passen ger Transport Building at St. James's Park Station (1929) ; and a marble figure, Genesis, (1931). (See SCULPTURE.) See Bernard van Dieren, Epstein (1920 ; also the volume devoted to the sculptor in the "Contemporary British Artists" series (1925).