EPSTEIN AGAIN

Evening Star, Issue 21076, 13 April 1932, Page 10

EPSTEIN AGAIN

BIBLICAL STUDIES SHOWH Jacob Epstein is again the centre of a very warm controversy owing to his coming exhibition of fifty-five water colour paintings, reproductions of some of which have been published (says the London correspondent of the ‘ Cape Times ’), Epstein’s new medium is all the more sensational because all his subjects are chosen from the Old Testament. Though he approaches most of them with sentiment as close to reverence as the Epstein technique allows, several pictures abound in all the grossness of ‘ Genesis ’ and ‘ Rima.’ His interpretation of Adam and Eve, for instance, cannot be published in a newspaper. It shows Adam as a negro, while Evo is left without features, though her other physical qualities are abnormally developed. ‘ Saul and Jonathan ’ appears to be one of the best in the exhibition, chiefly because Epstein has-striven to interpret the quotation: “ They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.” The painting gives a tremendous impression of masculine power in the figures of the legs, but gives Saul and Jonathan faces which are a cross between a human being and a dog. In ‘ Belshazzar’s Feast,’ where Epstein has full scope for his peculiar technique, the treatment is almost chaste.

Some critics treat Epstein’s new departure as daringly original. Others think that any starving artist in Chelsea whose ideas had reached a sufficiently maudlin pitch of degeneracy could do exactly similar work. The water colour drawings of biblical subjects by Mr' Jacob Epstein, which were exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, Old Bond street, are part of a series of 200 being done by Mr Epstein to illustrate a special edition of the Old Testament (says the ‘ Daily Mail ’). Only 500 copies will be printed—2so for this country and 250 for the United States. The price, it is expected, will bo £ls 15s a copy, and publication will take place in about two years. The completed drawings are in the “ Epstein manner,” and will, no doubt, provoke wide discussion. Mr Epstein said to a ‘ Daily Mail ’ reporter: “ The thought of illustrating the Bible has been in my mind for many years. 1 did the first drawing of my series about two years ago—one day when 1 was with my wife and daughter in Epping Forest.

“ The conceptions of the subjects 1 have chosen must of necessity be my own. There is no tradition to follow, and naturally I am left entirely free to conceive them in my own imagination. “ The Old Testament is not dogma—it is history. Therefore I am presenting the great figures of that history as they appear to me. I have always been greatly influenced by the Bible; and, indeed, 1 may say that it has always coloured my imagination, and consequently my works also. My spirit is a religious spirit, and my work is proof of it.”

Mr Epstein’s finished drawings include two inspired by the passage from the ‘ Song of Solomon ’; “ Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”" Among others are drawings of Rachel and Bilhah, Saul and Jonathan, and Adam and Eve. The last is particularly allegorical in treatment.