Jacob Epstein was born of Russian-Polish parentage at Hester Street on New York’s Lower East Side on 10 November 1880. As a teenager, he sketched the city and joined The Art Students’ League of New York in 1900. In 1901-02 he worked in a bronze foundry by day, studying drawing and sculptural modelling at night. Moving to Europe in 1902, he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, where he fell under the spell of Rodin. In 1905 he moved to London, became a fixture on the Bohemian scene and took his place in the Domino Room, alongside Eddie Marsh, Wyndham Lewis, Stanley Spencer and W B Yeats. He took out British nationality in 1910. Epstein was a pioneer of modern sculpture, often producing controversial works that challenged conventions and his sculpture is distinguished by a vigorous rough-hewn realism. In his enthusiasm for his art, he would sculpt friends, casual acquaintances and even passers-by dragged in off the street. His first major commission was the 18 figures he produced in 1907-08 for the exterior of Charles Holden’s British Medical Association Building in The Strand (now Zimbabwe House). The English were not ready for him and the work was condemned as obscene. The figures were mutilated in 1937 having become: ‘a danger to the public’. The furore over the figures caused a long-running row among the membership of the Royal Academy and also triggered the resignation of Walter Sickert.  Despite the acclaim for his sculpture The Tin Hat (1916), Epstein was blocked from obtaining war memorial commissions by senior figures in the arts establishment such as Sir George Frampton and his only war memorial would be the Trades Unions Congress War Memorial (1958) on the portico of Transport House at Bloomsbury in London. During the Great War, Epstein served in the Royal Fusiliers and was discharged in 1918. Unsurprisingly, he felt an outsider in his adopted country, being continually vilified for pushing the boundaries of public taste. He produced portrait sculptures of the Admiral Lord Fisher, the Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill, Paul Robeson, George Bernard Shaw, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert Einstein, Joseph Conrad and Ramsay MacDonald (for the House of Commons). Notable among his commissions was his extraordinary Assyrian Tomb of Oscar Wilde (1912) in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. His marble Venus (1917) may be seen in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut and his bronze Christ (1919) at Wheathampstead, England. He sculpted the W H Hudson Memorial Rima figure (1923) in Hyde Park, London. His Night and Day (1928-29) may be seen on Holden’s London Underground HQ at St James’s Park. His Jacob and the Angel (1940) is in the Tate Gallery Collection and was originally controversially ‘anatomical’. His Lazarus (1947) is at New College, Oxford and his Madonna and Child (1950) may be seen at the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London.  His bust of Sir Stafford Cripps (minus its spectacles) may be seen in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1954 Epstein was knighted. Throughout his career, he challenged public opinion and the artistic establishment. Liverpudlians were said to have nick-named his nude male sculpture The Spirit of Youth (1956) which stands over the main entrance of the John Lewis Department Store there ‘Swinging Dick’. Such factors undoubtedly focussed a disproportionate amount of attention on certain aspects of Epstein’s career and overshadowed his achievements. His bronze statue of Field-Marshal Jan Christaan Smuts (1956) stands in Parliament Square. A man with the common touch, Epstein tipped the foundrymen at the Art Bronze Foundry in Fulham a £5 note each – a fortnight’s wages in those days. His 15 foot-tall aluminium Christ in Majesty (1957) may be seen at Llandaff Cathedral. His 19 foot tall, 4 ton St Michael and the Devil (1958) may be seen on the exterior of the Coventry’s new cathedral. One of his last commissions was HRH Princess Margaret (1959) at University College, North Staffordshire (Keele University). On 19 August 1959 he was working in his studio at Hyde Park Gate on the Pan Group for Bowater House, Knightsbridge. He telephoned the Morris Singer Foundry to tell them it was ready for collection, went up to bed and was called to his reward. Epstein lived in a long-term relationship with Kathleen Garman, whom he married in 1955. The Garman Ryan Collection was donated by his widow to the people of Walsall in 1973. Epstein’s bust Kathlene at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery may be seen above.