Sir William Orpen portrays distinguished collector Jacob Epstein (1864-1945) as he looked entering the studio, where he was greeted by the painter, palette in hand. Orpen urged him to pose just as he was, in hat and topcoat. Following his arrival from Lithuania in 1879, Jacob Epstein began a wholesale notions business that eventually became a highly successful commercial enterprise of national scope. A great civic leader and one of Baltimore’s most generous benefactors, Epstein began his involvement with the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1924, when he was appointed to the commission to plan the construction of a new museum for the City. In 1929, upon completion of the building designed by the noted architect John Russell Pope, Epstein placed most of his major paintings on long-term loan to the Museum. Following his death in 1945, his distinguished collection that included sculptures by Antoine-Louis Barye and Auguste Rodin, as well as paintings, came to the Museum as a bequest.