Mary Spencer Watson; Guardian obit (Sculptor)
Hyfler/Rosner
March 18, 2006 Saturday
Brian Morley
Mary Spencer Watson: Sculptor who drew inspiration from the
great medieval cathedral craftsmen to carve her works in
local stone
At a time when an increasing number of neglected women
artists have been rescued from obscurity, the sculptor Mary
Spencer Watson, who has died in Dorset at the age of 92, is
still little known and remarkably undervalued. This may be
due, in part, to the fact that her work, though resolutely
modern, has less in common with today's celebrity
conceptualists than with the medieval carvers and
worker-craftsmen whose cathedral carvings she so greatly
admired.
Throughout a long career - she was physically strong,
energetic, and was still carving into her 90s - Spencer
Watson worked with a variety of traditional materials,
producing some fine terracotta and bronze pieces and many
splendid wood carvings. But it is as a carver of stone that
she will be best remembered. She was always willing to
experiment, letting the qualities of the stone - usually
Purbeck - predominate and lead her imagination. Her carvings
are mostly of animals, plants and figures, her vision based
essentially on the organic forms which she felt were natural
to humanity.
Spencer Watson was born in London, the daughter of a
painter, George Spencer Watson RA and his wife Hilda, a
dancer and mime artist who was a disciple of the designer
and actor Edward Gordon Craig. Family holidays in the
Swanage area led to the purchase, in 1923, of Dunshay Manor
in the hills of Purbeck. This was to be Spencer Watson's
home for the rest of her life. Dunshay was surrounded by
small quarries, traditional family workings with little
machinery except the capstan and chain, worked by a pony.
The quarrymen were also masons who cut and dressed the
Purbeck stone by hand with traditional tools. Some quarries
specialised in the restoration of cathedrals and medieval
buildings.
Spencer Watson was fascinated, and once saw a medieval
tracery window laid out for packing and transport to Lincoln
cathedral. This was, she said, an unforgettable experience.
The owner of one quarry gave her some tools and let her try
them. This sowed the seeds of her determination to become a
sculptor.
Her father, who had studied painting at the Royal Academy
schools under Frederic, Lord Leighton, sent Spencer Watson
to the local art school at Bournemouth, one day a week for a
year, to prepare a folio for application to the Royal
Academy schools. Her application was rejected; they felt
that she needed more experience, so she went to the Slade
school of art, where she modelled portrait heads and drew
from the antique.
A year later the RA accepted her and she spent the next
three years studying the figure, drawing and modelling from
life, working mostly on portrait and composition. She won
some prizes and medals, but at the RA there was no carving,
and so she went on to study under John Skeaping and Alfred
Turner at the Central School of Art. There she came into
contact with, and was influenced by, the current orthodoxies
of direct carving and "truth to materials".
In 1937, aged 24, Spencer Watson had her first solo
exhibition at the Mansard Gallery at Heal's in London's
Tottenham Court Road. Following this success, she visited
Paris with her parents to see the International Exhibition
at the Petit Palais and saw, as she said, "all the great
artists of the 20th century".
Although she had already served a lengthy studentship, she
still felt the need to work under a major artist. She chose
Ossip Zadkine and spent "three wonderful months" working in
his studio in Paris, carving an 8ft figure in wood and
producing a series of weekly compositions away from the
studio. Zadkine's teaching was designed to give his students
a greater understanding of mass and form. He also ordered a
new set of tools for Spencer Watson, from his own toolmaker.
Skeaping liked carvings to have a smooth surface, but
Zadkine encouraged her towards rougher surfaces which
emphasised the chisel mark. While in Paris she studied
medieval carvings at the Musee Cluny and visited Autun to
study the work of Gislebertus. She returned to England in
1938 and spent the war years working on her mother's small
dairy farm at Dunshay and teaching sculpture at various
local schools.
After the war she received important commissions from some
of the best architects involved in postwar reconstruction.
Sir Frederick Gibberd commissioned Magic Beast for a primary
school at Longbridge, and Cheiron Teaching the Young Hero
for Harlow New Town. She also held exhibitions, notably at
the New Art Centre in London, the Dorset County Museum and
the Roche Court Sculpture Park.
In 1953 she visited Greece and the great classical sites,
and on her return produced Musician, a carving in Purbeck
freestone which was exhibited at the RA in 1955. It was
noticed by the architect Sir Edward Maufe, who commissioned
two large gilded angels in limewood for Guildford Cathedral.
Later, Spencer Watson became obsessed with images of the
four beasts that appear throughout the Old Testament. These
became the four symbols of the Evangelists and are found in
illuminated manuscripts - notably The Book of Kells - and in
many cathedrals and parish churches. Her Four Symbols of the
Evangelists, carved from blocks of Purbeck freestone, now
reside along the processional way into the north porch of
Wells Cathedral.
She lived to see a major showing of her work, held in
Salisbury in 2004, which brought her achievements to the
attention of a wider public.
Janet Watts writes: Mary Spencer Watson was a powerful yet
unassuming presence in the Isle of Purbeck and its artistic
community. I met her at an opening party for the Purbeck
Arts Weeks, where a piece she was showing - Dancer, a figure
carved from a yew from her garden - stood amid the milling
guests, arms raised in benediction. It captivated me. So,
emerging from the throng, did she, a vigorous nonagenarian
with bright blue eyes who granted my request to visit her
studio and see more of her work.
Dunshay Manor, where I found Mary sitting in the porch in
the morning sun, stands on a marble seam quarried in the
13th century to make the pillars of Salisbury cathedral,
creating the lawned terraces now alive with her stone
figures and angel heads. Her father filled the house with
paintings of her, her dancer mother and the horses the three
of them rode over Purbeck. Her fascinated struggle with
Purbeck stone would bear rich and abundant fruit for the
rest of her life.
Mary's manner was no-nonsense, but a deep interest in
people, art and spirituality infused her talk and her work.
Her Salisbury museum and cathedral 2004 retrospective
exhibition proved a perfect setting for her massive pieces,
their earthy yet ethereal humanity recalling her beloved
Gislebertus, the 12th-century sculptor of Autun cathedral.
On her kitchen wall I noticed the same photograph of its
signed tympanum Gislebertus Hoc Fecit (Gislebertus made
this) that hangs on my own.
Now Mary has gone. But her Purbeck Quarryman stands with his
mallet and chisel in the churchyard at Langton Matravers,
her Dancer in my house in Swanage; and her unique character
lives on in the memories of the people of Purbeck.
Mary Spencer Watson, sculptor, born May 7 1913; died March 7
2006
Spencer Watson's Musician, hewn from Purbeck stone in 1955,
and (left), the sculptor photographed in 1950