Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959)

Epstein's portrait of Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011) was created in the same year that Freud, painter and grandson of Sigmund Freud, married Epstein's daughter, Kitty Garman. Epstein's portrait of his son-in-law captures the young artist's graceful yet powerful features, and a description of Freud by Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire whom Freud was later to paint, is brought to mind when she described him as having 'a sort of starry quality ... an extraordinary sort of mercurial thing. He's like something not quite like a human being, more like a will-o'-the-wisp'. Epstein's focus on the eyes and the intensity of the gaze echoes Freud's own portraits of Kitty at that time. Freud's portraits of Kitty are among his most well-known and celebrated works, and include Girl with a Kitten, 1947 (Tate, London) and Girl with Roses, 1947-48 (British Council Collection).

The present work is a unique bronze cast of the full bust portrait of artist Lucian Freud; in her book (loc. cit.) Evelyn Silber lists seven known casts of the head only. The plaster version of the full bust portrait is in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio.