The Camden Town Group in Context

The sculptor Jacob Epstein and the painter James Bolivar Manson met in 1903 when they shared a studio in Paris while studying. Despite their artistic differences, the two became good friends and obviously encouraged and helped one another.

The official tone of this letter, written in 1940, implies that they may have grown apart. But the fact that Manson, as then Director of the Tate Gallery, had protested against the proposed removal of Epstein’s sculptures from Rhodesia House (formerly the British Medical Association) on the Strand in a letter to the Times on 10 May 1935 suggests that the two were still supportive of one another. Despite this letter of protest, signed by important members of the art world including William Rothenstein and Kenneth Clark, the statues were hacked back in 1937 after a stone head fell and grazed a pedestrian. Epstein charted the complete saga in the appendix to his autobiography Let There Be Sculpture (1940), including the Times letter, which he asked Manson’s permission to reproduce in this letter.

Sarah Crellin, ‘Let There Be History: Epstein’s BMA House Sculptures’, in Penelope Curtis and Keith Wilson (eds.), Modern British Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 2011, pp.36–42.