Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959)

Einstein posed for Epstein in September 1933, shortly after renouncing his citizenship and fleeing Germany. He was staying in a small beach hut on Roughton Heath in Cromer, Norfolk, at the invitation of the journalist and MP, Commander Locker-Lampson. Einstein sat for Epstein for 2 hours each day over a period of three days but left to take up a professorship at Princeton before the portrait was completed. Epstein described Einstein's 'Wild hair floating in the wind. His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous, and the profound. This was a combination which delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt' (J. Epstein, Let There Be Sculpture, London, 1955, p. 77).