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The Visitation (1926)

Jacob Epstein

bronze

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

The Visitation (1926)

© The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein Tate, London

Details

Classification:

Sculpture

Materials:

Bronze

Physical Object Description:

Not inscribed.

Dimensions:

165.1 x 47 x 45.7 cm

Accession Number:

N04238

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1927

Ownership history:

Purchased from the Leicester Galleries, London by the Contemporary Art Society (as 'A Study'), 1926; presented to the Tate Gallery, 1927

This life-size bronze figure was intended to be one of a pair which would have depicted the biblical event, called The Visitation, when the Virgin Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth when they are both pregnant with Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, respectively. It was modelled in Jacob Epstein's studio hut in Epping Forest and exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, London in the summer of 1926 and called simply 'A Study' to avoid too critical a reception, as the artist later said. The model is probably Winifred Gwyn Jeffreys ('Jeff') who was a music student and secretary to the playwright, John Drinkwater (1882-1937) and who later took his and his second wife Daisy Kennedy's daughter, Penny to the USA in 1940 to escape the war. Epstein said that she 'expresses a humility so profound as to shame the beholder who comes to my sculpture expecting rhetoric or splendour of gesture'. Several later casts exist including at the Baltimore Museum of Art, USA and at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia.

All rights reserved. Any further use will need to be cleared with the rights holder. Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring, lending is prohibited. The collection that owns this artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

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