Epstein’s personal correspondence

The first full series of letters in the Epstein Archive have been catalogued and their records will appear on the archive catalogue on the website soon, which you can find here. This is a fascinating series of personal correspondence to Jacob Epstein and there are some very recognisable names in amongst the 30 to 40 letters that have survived. They are generally from the last years of Epstein’s life and, as you would probably expect, there are a lot gushing reviews of his work. Among the names that jump out are Somerset Maugham, John Cowper Powys, Basil Spence, John Gielgud, Rosalyn Tureck, Matthew Smith and T.S. Eliot.

The letters chart the incredible amount of works that Epstein undertook in the mid to late 1950s, such as Social Consciousness in Fairmount Park Philadelphia, Christ in Majesty at Llandaff Cathedral, St. Michael and the Devil at Coventry Cathedral, and the T.U.C. Memorial in London, along with a great many private portrait commissions.

My favourite letter, however, is from 1947 and sent by the Curator of the Central Museum Lahore. So keen was he to have an Epstein in his museum that he paid the not insignificant cost of transporting a sculpture to Lahore out of his own pocket, in the hope that he would be able to reclaim the costs from the museum’s budget in the next financial year. I wonder if he ever saw that £150 again.