Epstein was born
at 102 Hester Street, New York, on 10 November 1880. He was the
third child of
Max and Mary Solomon Epstein.
Mary and Max had
another five surviving children after Jacob's birth, but Jacob was
isolated from family life when he contracted pleurisy aged around
six and was ill for two years. During this period he read and drew
constantly. This early talent for drawing resulted in an art
competition prize at the Cooper Union in 1891. He began to study at
the Art Student's League in 1893, where he drew from models and
painted. However, his main source of inspiration remained Hester
Street.
Hester Street was
at the centre of New York's Lower East Side Jewish community. The
street consisted of crowded tenement buildings and open air market
stalls; Epstein was fascinated by the mass of people moving beneath
his window and would select individuals to follow and draw. When
the Epstein family moved to Madison Avenue in 1899 Epstein remained
in Hester Street, in a rented room. To support himself, he worked
as a physical education instructor and a tenement inspector. He
also began to sell his drawings.
Epstein's decision
to turn to sculpture was made during a winter spent in a small
cabin on the shores of Greenwood Lake with his friend Bernard
Gussow, a Russian artist. Epstein felt that he could give greater
reality to his drawings by studying sculpture, and when he returned
from Greenwood Lake he went to work at a bronze casting foundry and
in 1901 enrolled for evening modelling classes at the Art Student's
League. In the same year he received a commission to illustrate
Hutchins Hapgood's The Spirit of The Ghetto. His growing interest
in sculpture led to his decision to go to Europe; there were
limited opportunities for him to study in New York and he wanted to
see originals of Michelangelo and Donatello. He used the money from
the Hapgood commission to book a passage to Paris.
Little of
Epstein's work from this period survives, as a fire destroyed his
Hester Street studio in 1902. Extant sketches include his
Self Portrait of 1901,
The Sweat Shop or Lunch in the Shop and
Men with Mice and Birds or Fortune Telling with Rats.