Architectural historian, Karen Averby uncovers curiosities and stories from Walthamstow’s rich and varied past
AN elemental force
Photos: Epstein and Peggy © Getty Images, Autumn Landscape © Walsall New Art Gallery
Epping Forest has been home to several literary and artistic folk down the centuries, including Elizabethan poets George Gascoigne and Thomas Lodge, authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Lady Mary Wroth and actor and playwright Ken Campbell who lived adjacent to the forest. Such was his love for the forest that Campbell had his funeral there, a woodland burial at Epping Forest Burial Park.
Three such works were the Strand Nudes (190708, destroyed 1937), his memorial for Oscar Wilde (1912) featuring a rather debauched-looking angel, and Coventry Cathedral’s St Michael’s Victory over the Devil (1958).
His personal life was no less controversial. He had a string of mistresses, many St Michael’s Victory over the Devil, of them models, and when Coventry Cathedral in 1906 Epstein married Controversial painter and Margaret Gilmour Dunlop, sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein was another lover these continued. Margaret was tolerant, and dweller of the forest, and rented several allowing his models and mistresses to live properties at Baldwin’s Hill, Loughton with them at their Hyde Park home, even between 1922 and 1950. Although born raising Epstein’s first child, Peggy Jean, the in 1880 in New York to Polish-Jewish daughter of one of Epstein’s former lovers. refugees, he became a British Citizen in However, Margaret’s tolerance dissipated 1911 and produced his main body of work with Epstein’s relationship with his model in England. Initially a painter, he developed and mistress Kathleen Garman, one of as a sculptor and studied in Paris for two London’s Café Royal artistic set, and in years before establishing a London studio 1923 Margaret shot her in the shoulder. at Camden Town in 1905. To prevent scandal Kathleen did not press charges, and she and Epstein continued Epstein became a leading monumental their affair and had three children together portrait sculptor of the twentieth century, between 1924 and 1929. concentrating upon religious and allegorical stone figures and bronzes. He When Margaret died in 1947 from a brain produced many public works which were haemorrhage following a fall, Kathleen and often controversial and challenged taboos. Epstein were free to marry, and they wed in June 1955. Personal tragedy dogged them, however; their son Theo had died the House Histories previous year, and their daughter Esther Have you ever wondered who committed suicide nine months later. used to live in your house, or Epstein himself died in 1959, after just four how it has changed over time? years of marriage.
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Epstein’s impressive artistic legacy includes works produced when at his Epping Forest home. In 1933 he had ‘a frenetic summer of painting’ during which time he produced almost a hundred watercolours of Epping Forest which were exhibited in the same year. Many of these and subsequent paintings are now housed within the Garman Ryan Collection at Walsall’s New
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Epstein and his daughter, Peggy Jean, Epping Forest 1930.
Autumn Landscape, Epping Forest 1933.
Art Gallery, and others are at The Tate, London. Epstein also produced several renowned sculptures at Baldwin’s Hill, including Rima (1923-25) the W.H. Hudson Memorial in Hyde Park and Genesis (1929-30) at Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, both of which explored his belief in nature’s elemental force. www.archangelheritage.co.uk