Charles Kennedy Scott (1876–1965) 1925
Mary Morton (1879–1965)
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Mary Morton, sculptor and watercolour painter, was born at Stroud, Gloucester, on 21st March 1879. Her father, George Morton, is noted in the 1881 census (at Bisley Old Road) as a retired surgeon, born in the East Indies about 1839. Mary trained at the Bristol School of Art and, in 1911–1913, in the Modelling School of the Royal College of Art. She exhibited widely in Britain from 1907, including at the Royal Academy in 1909, 1912–1919, 1921–1922, 1927–1928, 1930–1935 and 1940–1941. She also exhibited in France and won a gold medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1925. Morton retained connections with Bristol and became a Royal West of England Academician in 1913, an associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1928 (and Fellow, 1948) and was an Associate of the Society of Women Artists with whom she showed 105 works between 1913 and 1960. In 1948 she also contributed sculpture to the art competition associated with the London Olympics of that year.
Scott, who founded and trained several notable choirs and was a pioneer in the reinterpretation of early choral music, was on the staff of Trinity College of Music at its original home in Marylebone from 1929 to 1965. The bust predates this: it was modelled in 1925/1926, first exhibited in the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition at the Royal Academy (13th November–11th December 1926, no. 287) and then at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts annual show in 1931. In the latter it was priced at £50 which suggests it may not have been a commission (unless there was more than one version), so the circumstances of its making are not yet clear. Scott expressly left papers to Trinity in his will but no pictures or other artwork: it none the less has three portraits of him (two dated 1909 and one of about 1940) as well as the bust, some or all of which may have been additional family gifts. He certainly owned the preliminary plaster version of the bust – which Morton may have given him – since he expressly bequeathed it, naming her as maker, to one of his granddaughters. A Mary Morton also appears in the list of sopranos in his Phoebus Singers at a choral concert at Trinity on 14th February 1945, so it is possible that Morton was musical, knew Scott much earlier, and that – plus his handsome appearance – prompted a request to sit for her in 1925. The Phoebus group was one that Scott set up to perform throughout the Second World War, often at Trinity, so likely to have included people not in active war service for age reasons. Morton was 60 when it broke out and is listed in the 1939 Register as then living in Oakfield Street, Kensington, and being an ARP warden at the nearby Princess Beatrix Hospital. She died at Sopworth House, 4 Rosecroft Avenue, Hampstead, on 15th June 1965 leaving estate of £22,900 at probate.
How the bronze version of the Scott bust reached Trinity is uncertain (no paper record has been found) but it may have been via Morton’s Hampstead neighbours, co-executors and residuary legatees as far as her remaining sculpture was concerned, the designer Archibald Philip Hartnell and his sister. Hartnell’s wife Katherine (Grant) Hartnell was also an artist and both of them were also very musical (she had studied at the Royal College of Music and had taught it). If Morton was one of Scott’s Phoebus Singers, as such musical friendship might suggest, they would have known of his Trinity links and may have been the agency through which it went there.
Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Is this sitter connected to the history of Trinity College of Music or the Laban Dance Centre?’
Text source: Art Detective
