One hundred years ago this week, as millions of fellow Americans received their call-up papers after the US entered the First World War, the New York-born sculptor Jacob Epstein faced a tribunal in London to be exempt from military service. Epstein had moved to Europe in 1902 and become a naturalised Brit in 1911. Already famous—and controversial—the tribunal heard that it would be a great national loss if Epstein took up arms and was sent to the Front. If a sculptor lost an eye or hand he would never be able to do work that no one else could do, The Times reported then (reprinted in today’s edition). He and his supporters hoped Epstein would win the commission to create a memorial to Lord Kitchener for St Paul’s Cathedral, the stern-eyed field-marshal who famously appeared on a recruitment poster early in the war, demanding “Your Country Needs You”. Epstein lived to sculpt another day, agreeing to join the Volunteer Training Corps, so staying in Blighty rather than crossing the English Channel to the Western Front.
