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拍品專文
Pandit Nehru (1889 - 1964) became the first president of an independent India on 14th August 1947, and remained in the position for the next seventeen years. As a key figure in international post-war politics, he came to London for the Commonwealth Conference in 1946 and it was during this visit that Epstein sculpted a sketch on which this portrait is based. Stephen Gardiner writes:
'Nehru ended up as a sitter purely by chance; he had never met Epstein, and wanted to see his studio while he was over; he was so keen to do so that he waited half-an-hour for the sculptor, out when he arrived. As they were talking together, Epstein became interested in his remarkable looks, and realising that a rare oppurtunity was being wasted, at once asked him to sit. In three days, with a session of one hour only starting at 9 a.m., the head was finished: Epstein called it a sketch, but it was a superb sketch, capturing exactly the Indian delicacy of the subject's bone structure' (S. Gardiner, Epstein: Artist Against the Establishment, London, 1992, p. 397).
For additional works by Jacob Epstein from the Edward P. Schinman Collection, please see lots 321-327 and 356-364 in the Modern British and Irish Art sale at Christie's South Kensington on 14 December 2012.
'Nehru ended up as a sitter purely by chance; he had never met Epstein, and wanted to see his studio while he was over; he was so keen to do so that he waited half-an-hour for the sculptor, out when he arrived. As they were talking together, Epstein became interested in his remarkable looks, and realising that a rare oppurtunity was being wasted, at once asked him to sit. In three days, with a session of one hour only starting at 9 a.m., the head was finished: Epstein called it a sketch, but it was a superb sketch, capturing exactly the Indian delicacy of the subject's bone structure' (S. Gardiner, Epstein: Artist Against the Establishment, London, 1992, p. 397).
For additional works by Jacob Epstein from the Edward P. Schinman Collection, please see lots 321-327 and 356-364 in the Modern British and Irish Art sale at Christie's South Kensington on 14 December 2012.