Romance in Stone – Doves

Continuing the Valentine theme that I started with Cupid, today I’m thinking about doves.  Very different from the human embrace and ardour, but none-the-less tender and romantic.  Bird romance anyway.

I’ve watched doves and pigeon pairs and their behaviour to one another is gentle and devoted and their courting attentive and caring.  I studied them whilst carving Doves and have enjoyed their billing and cooing many times since.

Epstein depicted them in a slightly different way, togetherness, but with a more extravagant expression of affection.

Jacob Epstein – Doves – Marble (first version) 1913

Doves – Jacob Epstein (second version) 1913 in Parian marble

Doves in Marble (third version) 1913-15 by Jacob Epstein

Hardly believable that when the ‘second’ doves carving was exhibited in October 1913 under the title Group of Birds, it  received a savage mauling from critics – ‘about Mr Jacob Epstein’s Group of Birds, the less said the better – one good thing is that he hasn’t messed the marble up much, so that it will come in nicely to make something else’.