Mary Spencer Watson

Mary Spencer Watson (7 May 1913 – 7 March 2006) was an English sculptor. Watson was born in London and spent most of her life in Dorset and was inspired by watching masons carving Purbeck stone, close to her family home there. Her works can be seen at Cambridge University and Wells Cathedrals, among other sites.

Biography Watson was born in London and in 1923 her family moved to a country house in Dorset. Her father was the artist George Spencer Watson and her mother, Hilda, was a dancer and mime artist. Her father purchased Dunshay Manor situated in the parish of Worth Matravers which became Watson's home for the rest of her life.

Watson attended Bournemouth Municipal College one day a week during 1929 and 1930 to prepare a portfolio for the Royal Academy Schools entrance examination. Rejected by the Academy, Watson studied at the Slade School of Art in London for a year before she was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools in 1932. Watson studied there for three years during which time she won several prizes and awards. To get more experience of carving she enrolled at the Central School of Art and Crafts in 1936 where she was taught by John Skeaping and Alfred Turner. Later that year she spent three months in the Paris studio of Ossip Zadkine at 100 bis, rue d'Assas, now the Musée Zadkine, where she carved a number of compositions, including an eight foot high figure. Her Four Symbols of the Evangelists, in Purbeck stone, now lead to the north entrance of Wells Cathedral. Watson exhibited with the Fine Art Society, at Foyles Gallery, at the National Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, with the New Art Centre and the Women's International Art Club. She had solo shows at Pelter/ Sands in Bristol, at the Dorset County Museum and a large retrospective at the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, with pieces shown at Salisbury Cathedral, in 2004.

For fifty years until her death, Watson was in a relationship with Margot Baynes who lived at Dunshay Manor with her children. Watson bequeathed the property to the Landmark Trust who, after a lengthy legal argument with Margot's daughter, Hetty Baynes, restored the Manor and began hosting public events there in April 2019.

Selected exhibitions

Mansard Gallery, Heal's, London, 1937 (first solo exhibition) National Society of Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, Potters, 1940, 1947 Royal Academy, London, 1940–1934 Women's International Arts Club, 1947, 1950, 1951 Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1950 Dorset County Museum, 1976, 1981, 1998 (solo) New Art Centre, London, 1985, 1989, 1990 (solo) New Art Centre, Roche Court, Wiltshire, 1987–2004 Pelter Sands, Bristol, 1988, 1990 Cookham Trinity Arts Festival, 1994 (solo)