Marguerite Milward

Marguerite Milward (1873 – 1953) was a British sculptor and anthropologist. She was best known for her series of busts based on racial types of Indian tribes, and her book Artist in Unknown India, which recounts her expeditions to find Indian models on which the busts were based.

Early life Milward was born Rosa Marguarite Edge in 1873 in King's Norton, Worcestershire. She was the daughter of a local architect, Charles Allerton Edge, the son of Charles Edge. She studied woodcarving, painting and modelling at Birmingham School of Art and Bromsgrove School. She married Philip Milward in 1901, a businessman, whose work took them both to South America. They separated a few years later following Philip’s affair with another woman.

In 1907 Marguerite Milward moved to Paris to study at the Academie Colorossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, becoming one of the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle's first students.

Philip and Marguerite Milward reunited in 1912. It was here that she began experimenting with the native sculptures which would become such an important part of her life’s work.

Following the outbreak of war in 1914 Philip Milward recruited more than eighty planters and merchants to form what became known as the Milward Contingent to serve in Europe. In December 1914, as soon as he reached England, Philip enlisted as a captain in the Rifle Brigade and set off for France. He was killed in action a year later. Marguerite spent the rest of the war in France, working at the French military nursing units at Fort Mahon, Pas-de-Calais, and at various hospitals along the Mediterranean coast. She also became Bourdelle’s assistant at his Paris atelier—most of his other assistants were called up for military service. Together, they worked on major projects, including the Monument to General Carlos M. de Alvear —which took ten years to complete and was finally shipped from France to Buenos Aires in 1925—and the Monument Aux Morts of Montceau-les-Mines.

Expeditions to India

Milward's first visit to India was in 1926, during which time she stayed with the Bengali poet and social reformer Rabindranath Tagore at Shantineketan. and she took great care to select the right subject, prioritising models who 'looked very interesting' rather than those simply representatative of "type".

This series received favourable reviews, notably from anthropologist J.H. Hutton and Sir Theodore Tasker of the Indian Civil Service. Her work has been compared to Malvina Hoffman's The Races of Mankind series of sculptures.