Studio: international art (79.1920)

JACOB EPSTEIN: ARTIST-PHILOSOPHER

but his mistress, Margaret Hughes, was
a player in one of Killigrew’s com-
panies, and a favourite of that caustic old
wit. 000000
Then of Killigrew, what shall be said i
Will it not be remembered that he threa-
tened his King that he would go to hell
and fetch back Oliver Cromwell as he
knew a king who could not rule his people,
and was not rebuked for his impertinent
candour ! Was it not he also who in
flippant mood declared that Louis XIV
and the Pope were the two Thieves be-
tween whom Our Lord was crucified,
but whose names he had not hitherto
known i 00000
The son of Sir Robert Killigrew, he
began life as page to Charles I, and
finished it as Groom of the Chambers to
his successor, and Chamberlain to the
Queen. He was born in 1612, he married
twice and died in 1683, and if here we have
a treasure he once owned and the portrait
of a prince he loved to serve, we have in it
a relic of two noble men, eminent in their
countries' history and art, and if, further-
more, we couple them by the addition of
Samuel Cooper's name, the miniature can
boast of no common interest, and is a
treasure of unusually high value and of
interest quite exceptional and noteworthy.

G. C. Williamson

JACOB EPSTEIN: ARTIST-PHILO-
SOPHER. BY JOHN COURNOS. *

1HAVE deliberately chosen the above
title for the following consideration of
Epstein's art. After a long and persistent
struggle, there are but few left to detract
from the artist's craftsmanship ; his busts
are now almost universally proclaimed to
be masterpieces of the first quality, rare in
any age. To judge, however, from the
storm of hostility which his symbolic
figure, The Christ, has aroused in critical
and lay circles, it is clear that artistic
history repeats itself, and that, like Rodin
before him, Epstein must fight his artist’s
battle all over again. It will be remem-
bered how, at the beginning of his career,
the French sculptor was under the necessity
of proving to his detractors that he was, in

every sense of the word, the creator of the
figure, The Age of Bronze ; while, later in
his career, his symbolic figure of Balzac
aroused hardly less protest than now
Epstein's Christ. Now, as then, violent
objection is raised against the artist's con-
ception of his character ; while conceding
to the artist his art, the critics question his
right to philosophize, to re-create a his-
torical character after his own way of
thinking, and in a mould not commonly
accepted. This particular aspect of the

“ THE CHRIST.” BY
JACOB EPSTEIN

I73