Kathleen Scott

Edith Agnes Kathleen Young, Baroness Kennet, FRBS (née Bruce; formerly Scott; 27 March 1878 – 25 July 1947) was a British sculptor. Trained in London and Paris, Scott was a prolific sculptor, notably of portrait heads and busts and also of several larger public monuments. These included a number of war memorials, plus statues of her first husband, the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes her as "the most significant and prolific British women sculptor before Barbara Hepworth", her traditional style of sculpture and her hostility to the abstract work of, for example Hepworth and Henry Moore, has led to a lack of recognition for her artistic achievements.

Kathleen Scott was the mother of Sir Peter Scott, the painter and naturalist and of the writer and politician Wayland Young from her second marriage to Edward Hilton Young. She is the grandmother of the sculptor Emily Young and of the writer Louisa Young.

Biography Early life and education Born on 27 March 1878 at Carlton in Lindrick, Nottinghamshire, Kathleen Edith Agnes Bruce 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. An orphan by the age of eight, she was brought up by a relative, William Forbes Skene, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended St George's School before being sent to boarding schools in England, including a convent school run by nuns.

Paris and Macedonia Scott studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, from 1900 to 1902. Then, with two friends from the Slade, Jessie Gavin and Eileen Gray, Scott enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Although she had taken some modelling classes at the Slade, at the Académie Colarossi Scott concentrated on sculpture and within three months had a statuette of a mother and child accepted for the Paris Salon, where it won a medal. This has been denied by others.

In London, Kathleen Scott created portrait busts and heads of various friends and relatives and also worked on a statuette of Florence Nightingale while supporting fund-raising exercises for the Antarctic expedition. Five days later a wireless message finally reached the ship Kathleen Scott was on and she was informed of her husband's death.

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. The first to be commissioned, by the mayor of Cheltenham, was her statue of Edward Wilson which was unveiled in July 1914. Historian David Day in 2013 suggested that the pair had conducted an affair there; however, this is refuted by historian Tom Griffiths, who says that they were united in grief at the time and found solace in one another.

In 1917, Scott served as a private secretary to Sir Matthew Nathan in the Ministry of Pensions.

1920s Scott visited Paris immediately after the war ended and worked to promote the formation of the League of Nations.

The Lawrence statue was one of several idealised sculptures of young male nudes that Scott created throughout her career.

In November 1919, Scott met Edward Hilton Young, an M.P. with a distinguished war record. They married in March 1922 with the ceremony taking place in the St Mary Undercroft crypt of the Palace of Westminster.

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.

Scott died, from leukaemia, at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, near to her Lancaster Gate home, in July 1947. Her funeral service was held at West Overton in Wiltshire, where a commemorative plaque is sited. Scott's grandchildren include the artist Emily Young and the writer Louisa Young, her biographer.

Awards and memberships 1915: Member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. 1925: Medal winner, Paris Salon 1925: Associate member of the Societe des Artistes Francais When her second husband was created Baron Kennet on 15 July 1935, she gained the title Baroness Kennet. In 1983, she was played by Athene Fielding in the BBC miniseries Shackleton, with Neil Stacy as her husband. In 1985, she was played by Susan Wooldridge in the television miniseries The Last Place on Earth, from Central Independent Television, with Martin Shaw as her husband. A BBC Radio play, Imitations by Michael Butt, was based on the friendship between Scott and George Bernard Shaw, who frequently sat for her.

Public art row image = GOC Welwyn Garden City 002 Ad Astra (49445680192).jpg commonscat = subject = Ad Astra location = The Campus, Welwyn Garden City date = c. 1940 show_artist= no type = Statue on pedestal material = Bronze and brickwork dimensions = designation = show_wikidata= yes wikidata = notes = A memorial plaque to Captain J. M. T. Richie at the church of St Peter & St Paul at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire. 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. 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. Bronze bust of Robert Falcon Scott, commissioned by the Devonport Corporation c. 1913-14, and displayed at the Stoke Damerel Community College in Plymouth. 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.