Winged Figure in 1961. John Lewis originally approached Jacob Epstein to create a sculpture to decorate the plain Portland stone side wall of the new store, but he declined as he was engaged on other commissions. Instead, in May 1961, John Lewis asked six other artists to propose designs. In addition to Hepworth – whose breakthrough public sculpture, "Meridian", had recently been installed outside State House on Holborn – the others were Ralph Brown, Geoffrey Clarke, Tony Hollaway, Stefan Knapp, William Mitchell and Hans Tisdall. None of their initial designs was accepted. Hepworth had been asked to express "the idea of common
Philip Hepworth Philip Hepworth Philip Dalton Hepworth (12 March 1888 – 21 February 1963) was a British architect. He studied in both the UK and France, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and the École des Beaux-Arts, and returned to work as an architect after serving in the First World War. He rose to prominence in the 1930s, featuring in a book by architectural critic Trystan Edwards and winning the commission in 1932 to design Walthamstow Town Hall, which was eventually completed in 1942. He lived in Zoffany House in Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, London, from 1936. During the Second World War, he