Epstein sculpture, akiko Hirai ceramics, anthony gross paintings, Sake & more - goldmarkK.tv

Welcome back to the Goldmark Gallery. This is really just a quick update video to let you know everything that's going on here in Uppingham at the moment. Spring seems to be in the air, though we've had some crazy April snow here in the last few days. And I don't know about you, but I feel in serious need of a haircut at the moment. April the 12th is just around the corner, a point at which hopefully the relaxation of lockdown rules will continue. And from that point on, we're hoping to have visitors by appointment only. So now is the time if you'd like to come and see something, if something has caught your eye on a website, something you've seen in one of our films. Do please get in touch, book an appointment, see if we're available. And we'd love to come and see you here in the gallery. Spring also means, of course, that it's the return of our quarterly magazine. And our spring issue has arrived in the last few days at the gallery, jam-packed with some lovely things. For one thing, it's worth buying if only for this fantastic piece on sake from Shirley Booth, who's a fantastic writer on Japanese food, Japanese cuisine. Extraordinarily knowledgeable, even taught Japanese Zen cookery in Tokyo when she lived in Japan for a number of years. This is a really fantastic piece. We've been very, very lucky to work with her. She's given us a fantastic beginner's introduction to sake with a few recommended sake from a supplier, tengusake.com. It's a really fantastic piece. If you've ever wondered what goes behind the making of sake, where it comes from, its history, and also a little bit about the pots that are used for it. This is a fantastic piece in here. Over behind me, you might be able to see the panels of our extraordinarily large Ralph Steadman mural. This is on its way to America, to a new home, hopefully, so there's a bit of stuff around at the moment. But there's also a couple of things I'd like to show you here from the magazine that you might spot in here in the gallery front room. If you come down here with me, we've got a fantastic piece. This is one of three sculptures that came in by Peter Eugene Ball. He's a fantastic sculptor. He works often with driftwood, bronze, and gold leaf, often in religious themes, but also some more whimsical pieces as well. This is, I think, a really beautiful piece. I think this is an old Aboriginal bowl, this wood, so this is really quite something special with this lovely serene figure here. In fact, you'll find this piece on the frontispiece of the Spring magazine, so do have a look at that. We've also got coming up, or in the next few months, two shows. We have, at the end of May, a Mike Dodd ceramics show. That'll be here at the gallery. There's an interview with Mike in the back of this magazine. We're really looking forward to that. It's been pots put aside for the last three years. It looks like some really fantastic work there, so we'll be very lucky to have that later. Then come June, we'll be putting on a really fantastic exhibition of oil paintings and etchings from the Antinigros estate. The curator and art historian, Julian Freeman, very kindly has written a really wonderful piece for this catalogue exhibition. In fact, you'll find some of his text here in the magazine. It's a fantastic introduction to growth if you've not known about his work before, but also gets into the meat of what this exhibition is going to be like. Some really, really wonderful paintings and prints for that, so keep an eye out. Do let us know if you're interested, and we'll let you know about dates for that. But I thought today we'd focus just a little bit on something very special from the magazine with a really interesting history behind it. And that's this fantastic portrait of Kathleen Garman, the future Lady Epstein and Jacob Epstein's mistress and wife. Here in front of me is the sixth portrait of Kathleen Garman. I believe Jacob Epstein made seven. She was his mistress. She was probably his most important muse in his life, and she would later become his wife as well in the very last years of his life. She was hugely important to his life. She bore three of his children, Theo, Kitty and Esther. And she really was one of the dominant figures of his life. They first met in 1921 in the Harlequin. This was one of many Boho, Soho watering holes where young impressionable socialites, the sort of literati, the artistic circles of the London area would quickly descend and swoop down on these young women at these bars. A fairly seedy but very kind of artistic milieu. She was a bit out of place there, really. Really, Kathleen Garman ought never to have been there at the Harlequin. She was the daughter of Walter Garman, who was a very strict Anglican doctor. She was born in Wensbury in the heart of the black country. She was one of nine children, seven daughters and two brothers. And despite Walter Garman's best efforts with a very sort of strict Anglican upbringing, his rambunctious brood would grow up to be incredibly rebellious, fiercely independent young men and women with talents for rebellion and philandery. Kathleen was his favourite. She was a gifted pianist and she had this wonderful face, this sort of old, ancient, knowing face with these fantastic high cheekbones and these deep, dark set eyes. She met eyes with Epstein in the Harlequin restaurant. Now, Epstein was not the usual kind of suitor. He was very quiet. He was large, sort of brooding with these sort of twinkly blue eyes, not conventionally handsome. But it was often from these sorts of settings that he would meet the various models that he would work with who would invariably become his mistresses. It was there that he saw Kathleen and it was from the Harlequin that their relationship began. There's a really fascinating history behind exactly what Epstein's relationship with his models was. His first wife, Margaret, who he had in fact met when she was already married to a barrister in Paris. They eloped together and came to London. She was eight years older than him. She was almost a sort of mother to him and to his career. She felt very profoundly that he was a sculptor who was not taken seriously by the British art establishment. And she was fiercely, sort of dogmatically defensive of his work, very supportive, to the point of really sort of weathering his tempers, looking after his very sort of fragile ego. She realised as the old woman that she was inevitably going to be surpassed by these young, beautiful models. And like many wives of artists at that time, she sort of subsumed herself to his career. And there became a sort of very bizarre, strange relationship between him, his models and his wife, Margaret. She became the kind of grand madame who let these people into their lives, often let them share their home in London, was very supportive of them, even raised a couple of their children that they had with Epstein so that they could go off and enjoy their dance careers and the sort of the tabletops of Paris cafes. So in many ways, she was very supportive of these relationships, very accommodating of Epstein's mistresses, particularly those she felt she had some kind of control over, she could sort of look after their lives. However, when Kathleen turned up on the scene, she realised that he was not a mere fling. This was a woman with whom Epstein was profoundly in love. He was incredibly adoring of her. And after several months of this relationship, she realised, I can't have this, I can't take this anymore. She invited Kathleen Garman, this young vixen in her Russian furs, to the Epstein home in London. And as Kathleen walked in, the door was closed behind her. Margaret whipped from her underskirts a pearl-handed pistol and shot her through the heart. Or rather, she was aiming for the heart. In fact, she missed and the bullet whisked past her clavicle and pierced her right shoulder. In fact, there were some fragments left of it there. Mrs Epstein fled the scene in panic. The maid was left to mop up the blood on the floor. And poor Kathleen staggered out of the home where she was rescued by her brother and taken to a hospital. This was not an auspicious start to Epstein's latest affair de coeur. But this was to become the most important relationship of his life, really. And in future busts, like this one, which was made in the early 1940s, you'll find there's no sign of the scar, the blemish, of that bullet that sealed those first months of their relationship together. Strangely enough, after the great drama of that first episode, things started to quiet down. And for the rest of their lives, Kathleen and her family and Margaret Epstein and their family would live separately. There'd be these two concurrent families which Epstein found himself drawn between. Epstein, as well as being this extraordinarily important avant-garde worker in stone, direct carver, in the early years of the 20th century, also became a fantastic portraitist in clay busts like this. He made many portraits of his family members, some really beautiful, achingly intimate portraits of his children as young babies and young infants, really beautifully captured in moments of play and sometimes sadness too. And in these seven portraits of Kathleen, you can kind of chart the development of their relationship and how their family together, this very strained relationship, worked over these years. In the first two portraits, the first one supposedly made the very day after they'd met and spent the night together, you see Kathleen as this young, bright-eyed, very sort of glittery, aware person. And in the second portrait, with her eyes, her lids heavily closed, her mouth sort of parted, this wonderful, panting portrait of sort of sexual ecstasy. This is something very different. This was some 20 years later, made perhaps around 1942. And while he's given Kathleen this sort of glow of youth still, despite the fact that this is a number of years on, much had changed in their relationship since then. Kathleen had raised three of his children. In fact, two of them had been sent off to her mother and a maid to look after. So sort of difficult was their relationship in London. And by this time, it was fairly firmly set that Kathleen was a major mainstay in his life, that she was undeniably going to become his future wife as his first wife Margaret became quite a bit older. This torso, in fact, began life as a full-length figure. And she was originally sort of modelled lightly, sort of held up on the balls of her feet, a sort of sprightly, sylvan figure with gardenias in her hands that trickled down to the floor. But he obviously very much enjoyed this portrait, and so it was kept as a torso bust. Without the gardenias this time. I think she almost looks like she's let go of a hand that she was just holding. It's a really beautiful, intimate portrait. So you can see she's in a slip, as she was often modelled, perhaps to hide that scar that she once had. But here you see all the things that Epstein loved about Kathleen, her intellect, her brightness, her sort of lust for life and for the creative world. She's got these fantastic, dark, deeply set eyes, these high cheekbones. It's a really beautiful portrait, I think, of someone who was obviously incredibly important to his life, even if he wasn't always able to give her the support that he really ought to have. The Garman-Epstein dynasty became extremely entangled in the world of the British art avant-garde of the late 1940s, 1950s. Kathleen's daughter was for a time in a relationship with Lucian Freud, and there were a great many links between these many siblings from the original Garman family and this sort of artistic world of artists, painters and writers. Epstein was far from an ideal father figure, far from an ideal husband, lover. But it's in these portraits that you can see him giving the kind of love, giving the kind of attention, the kind of intense consideration that he didn't in their actual relationships. So for all the difficulties of their lives together, it's in these really beautiful portraits that he kind of left a lasting impression of that time together. I think this is one of Epstein's most successful portrait busts, and it's been really interesting to hear some of the story behind it. This is just one of several pieces in our Spring Magazine, one of several things going on at the Gallery at the moment. We've got much more to come in the weeks ahead. I hope you've enjoyed this little update. Remember, 12th April, appointment only visits, so do please get in touch. And I hope to see you again very soon. Thanks for watching.