EPSTEIN AGAIN

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4047, 3 May 1932, Page 2

EPSTEIN AGAIN

BIBLICAL STUDIES SHOWN

.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 'fimes ’). Epstein’s new medium is all the more sensational because ail 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 ‘ Lima.’ His interpretation of Adam and Eve, for instance, cannot be published in a newspaper. It shows Adam as a negro, while Eve is left without features, vhough her other physical qualities are abnormally developed. 1 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 ■ions.” 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 in tween 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 Redferu 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 be £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 1 am left entirely free to conceive them in my own imagination. “ The Old Testament is not dogma—it is history. Therefore 1 am presenting the great figures of that history as they appear to me. 1 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.

some smart new French privateers. A midshipman on board has left a very interesting account of her doings, and tells us that when he was on board the share of each able seaman amounted to £6OO for one cruise. There was no uniform for the seamen in the Royal Navy in Nelson's time, and the crew cf the Aurora became great dandies, “ having the gold erusadoes (Spanish coins) made into buttons and sewn so thick on their jackets that many thousands of these coins were thus distributed in the ship.” The first great prize taken during the war with France was the French privateer Dumourier, of twenty-two guns and 200 men, and the Spanish ship St. Jago, from Lima, which she had just captured and pillaged of the most valuable part of her cargo, when five British meu-of-war appeared and took both vessels as prizes. The value of the capture was well over half a million pounds. The admiral had £70,465, each captain £28,186, and each seaman £34 12s. One of the British ships, the Phaeton, of thirty-six guns, was commanded by Captain Sir A. Douglas, the friend of Surgeon-general John White, of the First Fleet under Governor Phillip, and a great friend of Lord Nelson’s. Perhaps the most extraordinary story of a prize is that of Peter Baker, a master carpenter, of Liverpool, who, with no experience of shipbuilding, contracted to build a privateer of 400 tons, to carry 100 men and twenty-eight guns. When the vessel was launched she was, as might have been expected, so clumsy, lop-sided, and generally illbuilt that the intended owners refused to accept her. Being heavily in debt and rendered desperate, Peter Baker decided to go to sea in her himself, with liis son-in-law, John Dawson, who had some sea experience, and a crow he managed to get together by hook and crook. A Letter of Alarquc was obtained, and the Aleutor set out to try her luck. In the chops of the Channel a large ship living Spanish colours was sighted, and Baker decided to attack her, for, he said, “ I might just as well bo in a Spanish prison as the English one 1 shall he in if I return empty.” So at the* Spaniard he went. She surrendered with hardly a struggle, and. to his great delight, proved to he the Carnatic, a French East indiaman. with a cargo worth about half a million, one box of diamonds alone being valued at £135,000. Peter Baker returned in triumph, was received with tremendous applause, and became in time Mayor of Liverpool and a county magnate in his imposing new mansion, Carnatic Hall.

The school teacher had been reading her class the stories of the lives of famous inventors. “Now, then. Bertie, what would you like to invent?” she asked. Bertie rose to his feet, with a puzzled frown on his face. “ Well, teacher.” said tin? youth. “ I'd like to invent a machine so that by simply pressing a button all my lessons would be done." The teacher shook her head. " That's very lazy of you, Bertie.” she reprimanded. “Now let Millie say what he would like to invent?” “ Somethin:.'; to pre the button."