Kathleen Scott

FRBS
Scott in 1910
Born	Edith Agnes Kathleen Bruce (1878-03-27)27 March 1878 Carlton in Lindrick, Nottinghamshire, England
Died	25 July 1947(1947-07-25) (aged 69) London, England
Alma mater	Slade School of Fine Art Académie Colarossi
Spouses	Robert Falcon Scott ​ ​ (m. 1908; died 1912)​ Edward Hilton Young ​ (m. 1922)​
Children	Peter Scott Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet

Edith Agnes Kathleen Young, Baroness Kennet,

Born at Carlton in Lindrick, Nottinghamshire, Kathleen Scott was the youngest of the eleven children of the Church of England clergyman Lloyd Stuart Bruce (1829–1886) and his first wife Jane Skene (c. 1828–1880), an amateur artist.^[1] An orphan by the age of eight, Scott was brought up by a relative, William Forbes Skene, in Edinburgh where she attended St George's School before being sent to boarding schools in England including a convent school run by nuns.^[1][2]

Paris and Macedonia

Scott studied at the

In London, Scott took a flat in Cheyne Walk and made a series of portrait busts, mostly of young men.^[1] She became acquainted with George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm and J. M. Barrie, whose former home she later bought. At one point she became seriously ill with an abdominal cyst and was thought unlikely to live.^[1] Scott recovered and subsequently assisted her upstairs neighbour, a district maternity nurse, on house calls to deliver babies.^[1]

In October 1907 she met Captain Robert Falcon Scott at a tea party having briefly seen him at a lunch hosted by Mabel Beardsley several months earlier.^[1] The two spent ten days together before he left London on Naval duties but within a month they had decided to marry.^[1] Their wedding was on 2 September 1908, in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace with Rodin among the 150 guests.^[1] The couple took a house on Buckingham Palace Road in London and in September 1909 their son Peter Scott, who became famous in painting and conservation, was born.^[1]

In July 1910, she accompanied her husband to New Zealand to see him off on his journey to the

On her return to London Scott, and her son, were the subject of intensive public and press attention which she tried to counter by embarking on a concentrated period of work.[8] She began work on large statues of Captain Scott, Asquith and Captain Edward Smith.^[1] In August 1913 she spent some time in Andorra and in 1914 she went to North Africa. After trekking in the Sahara, Scott returned to Britain shortly before World War I began.^[1]

World War I

During World War I, Scott initially set aside sculpture and worked in a variety of other roles to support the British and Allied war effort. She helped to set up an ambulance service for the French army by transporting vehicles to northern France and raised money and recruited volunteers to support the establishment of

During October 1918 Scott began working at the Queen's Hospital in Sidcup, creating masks and facial models of wounded patients for the plastic surgeons there, including Harold Gillies, to use in planning their reconstruction operations.^[10][11][12]

1920s

Scott visited Paris immediately after the war ended and worked to promote the formation of the

The Lawrence statue was one of several idealised sculptures of young male nudes that Scott created throughout her career.^[13] The Lawrence figure was originally designed by Scott as a war memorial and was exhibited several times at major exhibitions in London and Paris under different titles, such as Youth and These had most to give.^[13] Although it won a medal at the 1925 Paris Salon the work failed to sell and Scott donated it to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Despite initial opposition from the Institute's board of management, the statue now known as May Eternal Light Shine Upon Them, was erected on the forecourt of the Institute's new building in 1934 where it serves as a memorial to the 1911–1912 Antarctic Expedition.^[13][14]

In November 1919 Scott met

From 1927 Scott and her family lived at Leinster Corner near Lancaster Gate in central London overlooking Kensington Gardens, in a house once owned by J. M. Barrie. The property had a coach-house, which she converted into a two-storey high studio, and a large garden where she worked on monumental pieces in the open air.^[1] These included a larger than life-size bronze statue of Thomas Cholmondeley, 4th Baron Delamere, on a ten foot base, costing £2,000, for Nairobi, Kenya.^[1]

Later life

Scott's 1929 solo exhibition at the Greatorex Gallery in central London received favourable press reviews and included portrait sculptures of, among others, John Reith, 1st Baron Reith, John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon and Anthony Bernard.^[1] Throughout the 1930s, despite bouts of ill health, Scott continued to work and travel. She visited Italy in 1930 and 1936, attended the Paris Salon in 1932 and, most years spent some weeks in Switzerland with her sons.^[1] She created a plaque depicting Queen Mary for the ocean liner of the same name, made busts of George V and Neville Chamberlain, a memorial for Poets' Corner and a statue of the actor Sabu.^[1]

Scott's work was in great demand in the years preceding the Second World War. Between 1935 and 1940 she produced a monumental nude figure originally entitled The Strength Within and later England, plus busts of

• 1915 Member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.^[18]
• 1925 Medal winner,
  Paris Salon
• 1925 Associate member of the
  Societe des Artistes Francais^[2]
• 1928 Associate member of the
  Royal Society of British Sculptors^[3]
• 1946 Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors[3]

Titles

In 1913, Scott was granted the

Selected public works

Image	Title / subject	Location and coordinates	Date	Type	Material	Dimensions	Designation	Wikidata	Notes
More images	Charles Rolls	Marine Parade, Dover	1911	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone			Q117378416	[19]
More images	Captain Edward Smith	Beacon Park, Lichfield	1914	Statue on pedestal with plaque	Bronze and Cornish granite		Grade II	Q26482574	[19][20]
More images	Edward Wilson	The Promenade, Cheltenham	1914	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade II	Q26667370	[19][21]
More images	Robert Falcon Scott	College Road, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard	1915	Statue on pedestal with plaque	Bronze and granite		Grade II	Q26562141	[22][23]
More images	Robert Falcon Scott	Waterloo Place, London	1915	Statue on pedestal with plaque	Bronze and granite	Statue 3m; pedestal 3.4m	Grade II	Q27084830	[19][9][24][25]
More images	Statue of Robert Falcon Scott	Christchurch, New Zealand	1917	Statue on pedestal and steps	Marble and stone		Category II	Q7437304	[26]
	David Lloyd George	Lloyd George Museum, Llanystumdwy	1921	Bust on pillar	Bronze				[19]
More images	May Eternal Light Shine Upon Them	Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge	1922	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone				[14][27][28]
More images	The Thinking Soldier war memorial	Market Square, Huntingdon	1923	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade II	Q26676626	[29][30][31]
More images	John Reith, 1st Baron Reith	Broadcasting House, London	1929	Bust	Bronze			Q108308624
More images	Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe	St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London	1930	Bust on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade I	Q30316413	Architect, Edwin Lutyens[19][32]
More images	Robert Falcon Scott	Scott Polar Institute , Cambridge	1934	Bust in circular niche	Bronze		Grade II	Q2747894	[28][33]
More images	Adam Lindsay Gordon	Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, London	1934	Bust	Stone			Q98596701	[34]
	Ad Astra	The Campus, Welwyn Garden City	c. 1940	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and brickwork				[19]

Other works

• A small bronze of the Indian actor Sabu which is now missing, after a theft.
• Bust of George Forrest Browne in Bristol Cathedral
• A larger than life-size statue of Thomas Cholmondeley, 4th Baron Delamere. It was initially situated in Nairobi, Kenya, but is now in the Soysambu Conservancy, near Nakuru, Kenya.
• Here Am I, Send Me, a bronze figure of a nude boy raising his arm as if volunteering. Following World War I, Scott made two casts of the figure as war memorials, one for West Downs School and one for Oundle School which were her son Peter's schools. When West Downs closed, the memorial was relocated to WWT Slimbridge, the nature reserve he had established.^{[35][36][37][38][39]}
• A memorial plaque to Captain J. M. T. Richie at the church of St Peter & St Paul at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire.^[40]
• A large standing statue, c. 1928, with arms folded and head bowed, of Edwin Montagu, former Secretary of State for India. Originally erected in Calcutta in 1931, the statue was subsequently relocated to the grounds of Flagstaff House, Barrackpore.^[41][42][43]
• The Royal Collection holds Scott's 1935 bust of King George V while the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in London has her head and shoulders figure of George VI.^[44][45]
• Bronze bust of Robert Falcon Scott, commissioned by the Devonport Corporation c. 1913-14, and displayed at the Stoke Damerel Community College in Plymouth.^[46]
• Three works by Scott are in the collection of London's
  National Portrait Gallery, and she is also the subject of several photographic portraits there.^[47]

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kathleen Scott.

• 52 artworks by or after Kathleen Scott at the Art UK site