Torso in Metal from `The Rock Drill'  1913-14

Bronze sculpture (LARGER PHOTO BELOW)

For his sculpture ‘The Rock Drill’ Epstein set a plaster figure on top of an actual pneumatic rock drill. As ‘a machine-like robot, visored, menacing and carrying within itself its progeny’ it became a symbol of the new age. He even considered adding a motor to make the piece move. Following the carnage of the First World War, Epstein removed the drill, cut the figure down to half-length and changed its arms; the resultant torso was cast in bronze. Mutilated and shorn of its virility, the once-threatening figure is now vulnerable and impotent, the victim of the violence of modern life

Below is the original design in charcoal on paper

In his autobiography of 1940 Epstein recalled 'The Rock Drill' both in the first version depicted here, and in its final state: 'It was in the experimental pre-war days of 1913 that I was fired to do the rock-drill, and my ardour for machinery (short-lived) expended itself upon the purchase of an actual drill...and upon this I made and mounted a machine-like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny, protectively ensconced. Here is the armed, sinister figure of today and tomorrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into...Later I lost my interest in machinery and discarded the drill. I cast in metal only the upper part of the figure'.