Genesis to Bossoms

Ever since its exhibition at London's Leicester Galleries two months ago, Sculptor Jacob Epstein's white marble Genesis has moved critics and letters-to-the-Times writers to a frenzy of denunciation. "You white foulness!" the Daily Express called it. Punch published tut-tutting cartoons. Last week the U. S. art world learned that the tide had turned. Genesis had found favorable reviews, and a purchaser. Opined the Manchester Guardian:

"The face has a blind dignity and pathos and the forms mount up in strange rhythm from the vast limbs set in a rough base. . . . The concision of the design ... is in Epstein's maturest manner. In this work the sculptor has given us his conception of the primeval mother of the scientists to set beside the 'Eve' of the classics. There is surely room for it in the world of art."

Sculptor Epstein was more interested in his customers, Mr. & Mrs. Alfred Charles Bossom of swanky No. 5 Carlton Gardens, London. They got Genesis for their own for $5,000.

An architect, an alderman, a man of wealth is clever little Purchaser Bossom. Like Sculptor Epstein he is of Semitic descent. His wealth derived from his conception and industrious execution of the idea of building skyscrapers like a graduated pile of boxes with the smallest on top -- the "set back'' style to provide air and light. He designed the Seaboard National Bank in New York (Seaboard Pres ident Samuel Bayne is his father-in-law), the Magnolia Petroleum Building in Dallas, Tex. Other important Bossom commissions in the U. S. included the restoration of Fort Ticonderoga for ex-Congress man Herbert C. Pell. In Britain he is a member of the London County Council and chairman of the Committee of the Royal Society of Arts for the Preservation of Ancient Cottages. The Bossoms may plant Genesis, obviously unsuitable for an Ancient Cottage, in their own garden.

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