Details

Object type

sculpture

Title

Lilian Shelley

Artist/Maker

Jacob Epstein

Culture/School

American; English

Place Associated

England, London (place made)

Date

1920

Materials

bronze

Dimensions

overall: 705 mm x 580 mm x 380 mm 5300 g

Description

Lilian Shelley, born Lilian Milsom in 1892, was the daughter of a Bristol pub landlord. A benefactor arranged for her to have voice training in London, and so began her career as a popular entertainer. She performed lively and bawdy songs and dances at both The Crab Tree Club and The Cave of the Golden Calf in London and was known variously as ‘Crazy Lilian Shelley', 'The Merry, Mad, Magnetic Comedienne’, ‘The Bug’ and ‘Pocket Edition’. Artist Augustus John, for whom she also modelled, called her 'Bill', perhaps suggesting that she was a performer who challenged traditional gender roles. Her two best known songs, ‘My Little Popsy-Wopsy’ and ‘You Made me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)’, are full of sexual innuendo.

In the years immediately before World War I, London enjoyed a roaring nightclub scene. The Crab Tree and Cave of the Golden Calf, were known for their decadent parties and subversive performances. The Golden Calf, set up by the Austrian writer Frida Strindberg, was an underground club, intended as a meeting place for artists and writers. It was decorated by well-known painters and sculptors, including pioneer modern sculptor Jacob Epstein. He contributed carved and highly coloured columns and capitals. The club's 1912 manifesto promoted the club as ‘a place given up to gaiety’. Unlike other London clubs, it remained open after midnight and was arguably Britain's first gay club, with its promotion of sexual freedom.

Epstein frequented both The Crab Tree Club and The Golden Calf, where he probably met Shelley. In this sculpture Epstein shows Shelley bare-shouldered, holding a shawl around her back. Her lips are parted, giving her a sensuality and vitality, but also suggesting that she is on-stage holding the last notes of one of her popular songs.

New-York-born Jewish artist Jacob Epstein moved to Paris in 1902 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie Julian. In 1904 he settled in London. He challenged convention with his powerful, simplified and often sexually explicit sculpture which referenced pre-classical and non-European art. The expressive portrait busts that he made throughout his career, modelled in clay and cast in bronze, were less controversial. Sitters included writers, artists, musicians, politicians and performers such as Joseph Conrad, Robert Bontine Cunninghame-Graham, T. S. Eliot, Augustus John and George Bernard Shaw, as well as more intimate portraits of his family, friends and lovers.

In 1914 Lilian Shelley married Bohemian Irish portrait painter John P. Flanagan, a student of Walter Sickert, rival of Augustus John and London nightclub owner in the 1950s. They possibly met at The Café Royal, in Regent’s Street. A portrait of her by him was published in the Colour Magazine in June 1920. As a nightclub performer she would sometimes write her own songs, and in 1923 she wrote her first novel, Mary Bryant, a Girl of the People, which is to a large extent autobiographical, being about a girl born in a Bristol slum who seeks a better life in London and Paris.

This portrait is inscribed, ‘To LADY SACKVILLE, EPSTEIN 1920’, behind Shelley’s right elbow. This is likely to be Baroness Victoria Sackville-West, known as Lady Sackville, the mother of Bloomsbury writer Vita Sackville-West. She was a socialite and patron of Epstein, as well as close friends with Rodin, who made a marble bust of her in 1913. This half-length sculpture of Lilian Shelley was acquired by Glasgow shipowner William Burrell in 1924. Epstein also made a head of Lilian Shelley, commissioned by a member of the Sassoon family.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by Sir William and Lady Burrell to the City of Glasgow, 1944

Collection

Burrell Collection: European Statuary Bronzes

ID Number

7.3

Location

Burrell Collection