- Artist
- Sir Jacob Epstein 1880–1959
- Medium
- Bronze
- Dimensions
- Object: 419 × 394 × 229 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1953
- Reference
- N06139
Catalogue entry
N06139 MRS MARY MCEVOY c. 1910
Not inscribed.
Bronze, 16 1/2×15 1/2×9 (42×39×23).
Chantrey Purchase from Mrs A. Bazell 1953.
Coll: Purchased from the artist by the sitter's daughter, Mrs Anna Bazell, c. 1949.
Exh: Leicester Galleries, February–March 1917 (4), as ‘Mrs Ambrose McEvoy’; Grosvenor Galleries, summer 1922 (38); Farargil Galleries, New York, November 1927 (13); Jacob Epstein and Matthew Smith, Temple Newsam, Leeds, July–September 1942 (7), as lent by the Leicester Galleries; Tate Gallery, September–November 1952 (4); R.A., 1953 (1280); Edinburgh Festival, August–September 1961 (16).
Lit: Van Dieren, 1920, p.72, repr. pl.24; Haskell, 1931, p.167; Epstein, 1940, p.56; ibid., 1955, p.42; Buckle, 1963, pp.23, 39–41, 424, repr. pls.55–6.
Repr: Royal Academy Illustrated, 1953, p.88.
The bust is dated 1910 by Haskell, loc. cit., but Buckle, loc. cit., dates it 1909. Cf. N03187.
The sitter was Mary Spencer Edwards (1871–1941), wife of Ambrose McEvoy, both painters. Her daughter wrote (9 September 1959); ‘Apart from its merits as a work of art, this bust was also an amazing likeness of my mother.’ Buckle notes (op. cit., p.40) that the bust was modelled by candlelight as the electricity had been cut off.
A marble bust made shortly after the bronze was acquired by the Municipal Art Gallery, Johannesburg, by 1911 and is reproduced in Buckle, op. cit., pl.57. Another bronze of N06139 is in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1077), purchased 1933. A third cast was made for Mrs Bazell in 1953.
Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I
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