Born in New York, to a religious immigrant family from east Europe. Epstein joined the influential "Art Students League of New York" in 1900. He painted images from the Jewish immigrant neighborhood, and in 1902, his paintings were published in a book called "The Spirit of the Ghetto", which displayed the Jewish world before the American public for the first time. Epstein left the United States that year and went to study in Paris. Later on he settled in England, where he became a well known and controversial as a sculptor.