Kathleen Bruce

Her statue of her first husband in Christchurch, New Zealand

Kathleen Scott, Baroness Kennet, FRSBS (27 March 1878 – 25 July 1947) was a British sculptor.

Born Edith Agnes Kathleen Bruce at Carlton in Lindrick, Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, she was the youngest of eleven children of Canon Lloyd Stuart Bruce (1829–1886) and Jane Skene (d. 1880).

She attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1900 to 1902, and then enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in Paris from 1902 to 1906 and was befriended by Rodin.

Works

Three of Scott's busts feature in the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery, and she is also the subject of thirteen photograpic portraits there.

She sculpted at least two statues of her first husband, Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, after his death. One of these is located in Christchurch, New Zealand^[1] and another is in Waterloo Place, London. A plaque of Scott is on the exterior the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge with a statue of "Youth" (1920), for which the model was A.W. Lawrence, younger brother of T. E. Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia").

She also sculpted a statue of Edward Smith, captain of the Titanic, after his death. This is situated in Lichfield, England.

A statue at Oundle School entitled "Here Am I, Send Me" is erroneously held to be modelled on Peter Scott.^[2]

Personal life

She married the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott on 2 September 1908, and a year later gave birth to their son Peter Scott, who became famous in broadcasting, ornithology, painting, conservation and sport, and was knighted. In 1910, she accompanied her husband to New Zealand to see him off on his journey to the South Pole. In February 1913, while sailing back to New Zealand to greet him on his return, she learned in mid-ocean of his death in Antarctica in March 1912.

In 1922, she married the politician Edward Hilton Young. Her second son, Wayland Hilton Young (1923–2009) was a writer and politician. Her grandchildren include Emily Young, artist, and Louisa Young, writer.

Titles

In 1913, she was granted the rank (but not the style) of a widow of a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. This meant that, for the purposes of establishing official precedence, she was treated as if she were the widow of such a knight. However, she was not entitled to be called Lady Scott merely by virtue of this, and it did not amount to Captain Scott being posthumously knighted.

When her second husband was created Baron Kennet on 15 July 1935, she gained the title Baroness Kennet.

References

Biographies

• Autobiography (1932)
• A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott, ISBN 0-333-57838-4 (1995) - Louisa Young
• A Father for my Son (biographical play, premiered 2000), - Jenny Coverack

Some text and images from Kathleen Bruce at Wikipedia under the GFDL licence. 9869 bytes, 2010-09-07