Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson

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Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (born Brookline, Massachusetts in 1871, died in Boston, Massachusetts on October 29, 1932) was an American sculptor.

As a young child she displayed artistic talent, but when her mother attempted to enroll her in the Boston Museum School she was informed that the program did not accept female students. Eventually she began studying with sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson in 1886; she married him in 1893.

In 1895 Kitson was the first woman to be admitted to the National Sculpture Society.

In the course of her career she created many public monuments, both in conjunction with her husband and on her own. Her best known statue is the Hiker, a monument commemorating the soldiers who fought in the wars of the United States' turn of the 20th Century Manifest Destiny territorial expansion, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. Around 50 versions of this work can be discovered spread over much of the United States.

[edit] References

  • Opitz, Glenn B , Editor, Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
  • Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston 1990#