About Edith Scott

Edith Alice Scott was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1877 and entered the Boston Museum School in 1897, where her instructors included Edmund Tarbell, Frank W. Benson and Philip Leslie Hale. Upon graduating in 1901, Scott enrolled in advanced classes, winning an honorable mention in the Sears Prize Competition and a prize for portraiture in 1903. She was well-known for her miniatures and portraits, and was a good friend of Elizabeth Paxton, the wife of artist William McGregor Paxton. In 1906, Scott moved into a studio at the Fenway Studios building on Ipswich Street in Boston’s Back Bay, and spent summers painting in Annisquam, on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

In and around the year 1911, Edith Scott traveled to Europe and painted in Giverny. Her freely-brushed landscapes from this period reflect the influence of Impressionism on her work. She came back to Boston by 1913 and in time took a teaching role at Miss Porter’s School for Girls in Farmington, Connecticut. Scott exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Society of Independent Artists, and also showed with Vose Galleries in 1915 and 1917. Today, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC has a portrait of Amelia Earhart painted by Scott in their collection.