Homage: A Book of Sculptures by Kathleen Scott (Lady Kennet)
Published Geoffrey Bles (1938)

I was introduced to this book by Philippa Scott at Slimbridge who was sitting for me during 2007. She showed me the copy given to her late husband Peter Scott by his mother (and wife of Scott of the Antarctic), who had trained with Rodin and subsequently produced many portraits in England during the 1920s and 1930s, as Lady Kennet. I think it is worthy of reproduction, in its profound emphasis of the pressures on a sculptor to 'penetrate the indifference of the public'.

INTRODUCTION reproduced in full:

"To Stephen Gwynn's commentary, which seems to me an ideal accompaniment to this picture book, I must add only a few words.

Artists are of all people the most fortunate. Work and play are one to them; their work is their pleasure, which brings them forgetfulness of worries. Others, for joy, escape from work to some distraction; artists, for joy, escape from distractions to their work. Artists find pleasure where too many others find only irksomeness, and work, a confinement to others, is a release to them. Who is so free as an artist? Contrast his life with that of a man in an office, a school, a shop, or the Church. He has no one to obey, no manager, head master, charge, hand, or bishop. He has no one to take orders from but himself and God; and if he is a sincere artist he finds that God is kind, and "save by an evil chance" orders him to do only what he loves, in the service of beauty.

There is an exquisite saying of Marcus Aurelius which artists may turn to again and again:

The fountain of happiness is within; if we will ever delve, it will ever spring.

Truly artists are the happiest of mankind. but whether an individual is one sort of artist or another seems an odd, chancy thing. Things that have always stirred me most are movement and colour, and yet these are levities which sculpture admits only against its better judgment. For example, a perennially happy sight to me is gay-coloured washing, billowing and comic on the clothes-line, in the backyards on a windy Monday morning; and another is small sailing boats in a rough purple sea, with white spray splashing the bronzed blue-jersied, boys, who are straining taut-limbed and eager. It is all colour and movement, right for a painter, but all wrong for a sculptor; and yet sculpture took me.

It is difficult to make a small selection of pictures from a very large number of works. The three principal guides in the choice have been, first, the quality of the work itself, then, to some extent, the quality of the subject, and last, the quality of the photograph. One cannot leave the photography out of account; for photographing sculpture is a very difficult business, and results are often misleading. This is the chief reason why I have included no photographs of large public monuments except that of Captain Scott in New Zealand. The photographs which can be taken of bronze statues over life size in public places are almost always unsatisfactory. The statue of Captain Scott is white marble and therefore much easier to photograph.

The work illustrated in this book was done over a long period. The earliest is the mask of W. B. Yeats, and the latest is that of Austen Chamberlain, which was not yet finished when this book was written. There is more later work than earlier, because in earlier days, for economy's sake, fewer works were cast in bronze or carved in marble, and in course of time, and of changes from Paris to London, and then hither and thither, early plasters have perished, or were voluntarily destroyed.

I have never so far had to do a portrait of a man of whose personality I knew nothing. I think it would be very difficult, for in portraiture it matters, perhaps, to study the measurements of a nose and the angle of a chin, but it matters so much more to discover what the man stands for, what he is after, and what is his character and the trend of his mind. Emphasis is necessary to make a portrait. It need not, perhaps, be an actual distortion; but it must he something more than the mere facts, if the characteristic colour, expression, and personality are to inform the bronze or marble. A portrait sculptor has more to do than merely imitate. The greatest difficulty is when the appearance belies the character. It happens rarely, but it does happen, that appearances are thus unexpected. A clear mind and strong will hide themselves under vague, illusive forms. A dreaming mind and a passive nature have sometimes forms as clear-cut and harsh as an eagle. Interpretation is then very difficult.

Great rulers are often enveloped in a rigidity born of shyness and reserve which obscures the warmth, sensitiveness, and acute perceptions that are there, and in addition bronze and marble contribute their hardness to this rigidity. It is not easy then to bring these elusive qualities out through the obdurate medium of the sculptor. The most accurate measurements with the calipers give no help here. The King, Neville Chamberlain, and Colonel House are examples of personalities that are thus baffling.

On the other hand there are some personalities that present none of these difficulties. They look like themselves, and their character shines out of their faces, undimmed by shyness. Nansen and Lloyd George are such heads. Their personalities take charge, as it were, and it is well nigh impossible not to get a quick and unmistakable likeness. Bernard Shaw expressed something of this when he said of a bust of Lord Northcliffe: "What a good likeness! I never saw Northcliffe in my life; but all Northcliffes must be just like that!"

If a sculptor may, indeed must, emphasise as well as imitate, may he not think himself free to emphasise the good in a personality rather than the bad? Is there any reason why he should not do so if he likes, and are there not many reasons why he should like? In conversation we know that it is good manners and good sense to talk about pleasant and beautiful things, and leave their opposites alone; and we know that, with practice, it is quite as easy (or at any rate very nearly as easy!) to be witty and interesting and vivacious about people's charming qualities as about their shortcomings ! Why should it not be the same with portraiture? In looking for the character behind the forms, why not be content to look for what is good, for strength, mirth, kindness, and vitality ? If there is a hint in the forms of self-indulgence, or cruelty, or inertness, one may be well content to leave it unexplored and unemphasised. An artist ought, no doubt, according to the familiar maxim, to look so deeply into his subject that he sees there all that anyone has ever seen, and ought then to look again and see more than anyone has ever seen. But when that has been done, he may surely claim freedom to take as the theme of his own work that which he liked in what he saw, and not that which he liked less.

Sculpture, I sometimes think, had two parents: decorative reliefs scratched on rocks or carved on temples; and religious effigies, totems and idols, and all other sorts of dollies. Modern sculpture seems to derive more by inheritance from the dollies than from the decorations. Statues and busts increase, and decorative sculpture decreases, and it is not the fault of the sculptors. Most sculptors would much rather make their work to fit some set surroundings and serve a particular purpose about a building or a garden than make an isolated object to go nowhere in particular. But very few are fortunate enough to get the chance to work thus for a decorative purpose. Most have just to make their dolly and send it to an exhibition without having any idea what will become of it when the exhibition is over For at the exhibition who will look at it but the hanging committee and perhaps a critic or two ? Not very many of the public! 
Standing near the door of the deserted sculpture gallery at an exhibition, one hears folk say, as they glance in, " That's only sculpture," and hurry by. How many look at the good decorative sculpture which is to he seen on some London buildings, such as the Hall of the London County Council just across Westminster Bridge ? There, on that building, sculpture is what it should be, an embellishment to fine architecture, as it was when it was at its best, in the reliefs that beautified the Parthenon, and the figures on the porches and facades of the French cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims, and on our own treasure, Wells.

But how many ever look at the fine work on the County Hall, or at any other sculpture? Poor sculptors ! Is it to be wondered at that, as a last resort in order to get people to look at their work, they sometimes break out into stuff that is so fantastic and extravagant that people cannot help noticing it ? It is a temptation that besets many a serious artist nowadays, to penetrate the indifference of his public; if he cannot by other means, then by leaving his true allegiance and resorting to some form of outrageous eccentricity.

I think my lasting allegiance is given, in sculpture, to those exquisite elongated ladies at Chartres, and to their lovely archaic ancestors, the maidens on the Acropolis; and, in life, it is given to the springing grace of the stripling, and the majesty of thought-worn faces.
In that allegiance, this picture book is offered in gratitude to "great men and happy years"

K.K
Leinster Corner, W.2."