Papers of Henry Edwards Scott, Jr., 1918-1956

Henry Edwards Scott, Jr., was born on August 22, 1900, in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Henry Edwards Scott, Sr., (Harvard 1881) and Harriet Adelia Chapman, of Middlebury, Vermont. Scott, Sr., was a history instructor at Harvard University (1884-1888); he later taught Latin, Greek, and history at Middlebury College, St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, and Medford High School. From 1912 until his retirement in 1937 he was editor of the publications of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. Henry Edwards Scott, Jr.’s mother was a musician. His twin sister, Harriet, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1922; a second sister, Elizabeth, died prematurely.

After serving in the Navy during World War I, Scott, Jr., attended Harvard, graduating in 1922 with a degree in engineering. After completing a tour of Europe in the fall of 1922, he returned to Harvard to assist Arthur Pope and George Edgell, both of whom inspired him to pursue post-graduate work in art history. Scott, Jr., was active in the Harvard Department of Fine Arts as he continued his education, rising from student to classroom assistant, then tutor, and finally, head tutor and lecturer in Venetian painting.

In November 1926, Scott, Jr., married Radcliffe College graduate Margaret “Peggy” Gustin (1905-1994). The Scotts had four children: Henry Edwards Scott III, Anne (Scott) McGhee, Sarah (Scott) Cook, and Jonathan Fletcher Scott.

From 1926 to 1928, Scott, Jr., lived in New York, where he studied and practiced painting. Subsequently, he became an instructor at the University of Rochester and assistant to the director of the university’s Memorial Art Gallery (1928-1929). He spent the next five years at the University of Pittsburgh working with Helen Clay Frick to establish an arts department. An accomplished painter, he also taught studio art classes and exhibited his own work. From 1935 to 1943, Scott, Jr., was a tenured professor at Amherst College, where he became head of Amherst’s art department and was instrumental in ensuring the secure storage of the school’s art collection during the Second World War. During WWII, he returned to serve in the Navy as a navigation instructor in Texas and Martha’s Vineyard. In 1945, Scott, Jr., returned to Harvard for graduate study under Paul J. Sachs, taking Sachs’s “Museum Course.” He received an A.M. in 1946. In 1947, he was appointed chairman of the art department at the University of Kansas City, where he remained until he retired to Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, in 1970. Scott, Jr., died in Chilmark on October 24, 1990.