Daemons and Angels. A Life of Jacob Epstein

First edition, first impression. Some edge wear to top and bottom of jacket and spine, corners bruised, slight lean, price clipped, long unsigned gift inscription (but maybe inscribed by the author to commemorate a charity event) in heavy black pen on ffep 'Yonty, A Souvenir of a magical evening at Somerleyton with sincere thanks Rotary Club of Great Yarmouth, Inner Wheel Club of Great Yarmouth. 14th June 2002'. internally clean and tight, overall a vg+ copy. 300pp, illustrated. 'I feel that I can do the best, most profound things and life is short. How I wish I was living in an age when man wanted to raise temples to man or God or the Devil.' Jacob Epstein was thirty when he wrote the impassioned words that seem to presage the lack of understanding that would dog his creative genius. Now belatedly recognized as a seminal figure in the history of twentieth century art, the first to carve directly in stone since the medieval period, his powerful and often explicit sculptures, monumental in scale, were hailed as works of genius by a few contemporaries such as Ezra Pound and Augustus John, but provoked hostility and censoriousness from the art establishment. A mass of pure energy with huge ambition, Epstein emerged from the Jewish ghetto of New York to take the art world by storm with the astonishing originality, vitality and ambition of his early work. Determined resistance to the modern movement forced him to be more commercial - in 1946 he modelled the portrait of Winston Churchill, and in 1954 he was knighted. But behind the apparent acceptance of conservatism he returned always to the monumental type of carving with which he had begun his career. Biographer June Rose (1926-2018), gives a full and enlightening account of his struggle for recognition, his tangled private life and its resonance in his work. Quite a scarce book.…