Emily Georgiana Kemp
{{Short description|British adventurer, artist and writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{more footnotes needed|date=June 2019}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Emily Georgiana Kemp
| image = Emily Georgiana Kemp portrait of author as Chinese "Female Travel-Scholar" from book, The Face of China, Travels in East, North, Central and Western China (cropped).jpg
| alt =
| caption = Emily Georgiana Kemp self portrait as Chinese "Female Travel-Scholar" from her 1909 book
| birth_name =
| birth_date = 1860
| birth_place = Rochdale
| death_date = 1939
| death_place =
| nationality = British
| other_names =
| occupation = Writer, artist
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
| family = George Kemp, 1st Baron Rochdale (brother)
}}
Emily Georgiana Kemp (1860–1939) was a British adventurer, artist and writer. She was awarded the Grande Médaille de Vermeil by the French Geographical Society for her 1921 work Chinese Mettle.{{Cite web |url=http://www.socgeo.org/grand-prix-de-la-societe-de-geographie/ |title=Grand prix de la Société de Géographie | Société de Géographie - Depuis 1821, la plus ancienne société de géographie au monde |access-date=2013-09-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141220053220/http://www.socgeo.org/grand-prix-de-la-societe-de-geographie/ |archive-date=2014-12-20 |url-status=dead }}
Biography
Kemp was born in Rochdale to parents George Tawke Kemp and Emily Kelsall. She had four older sisters and a younger brother, George.Kathryn Rix, "From Rochdale to Westminster: Emily Kelsall and the new Houses of Parliament", The Victorian Commons, 11 June 2020. https://victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2020/06/11/from-rochdale-to-westminster-emily-kelsall-and-the-new-houses-of-parliament/ Retrieved 23 Jan 2025. The family were devout Baptists and wealthy middle class industrialists; her father and maternal grandfather Henry Kelsall ran a textile manufacturing firm.{{Cite web|url=http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/issues/Cultures%20of%20Travel/5-Wu.pdf|title=Material Culture, Memory, and Mobility: Emily Georgiana Kemp's Travels in China|work=Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies|first=Juanjuan|last=Wu|date=September 2022|accessdate=7 April 2024}} Kemp was of the first students at Somerville College, Oxford. She continued her studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
She travelled in China, Korea, India, Central Asia and the Amazon, sketching, painting and writing, sometimes travelling with May Meiklejon MacDougall.Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, Noonan's, Mayfair, London, 5 Dec 2023, lot no. 380. https://www.noonans.co.uk/auctions/calendar/678/catalogue/474185/? Retrieved 23 Jan 2025. The focus of her works was the education and welfare of women and their role in religion.
In 1914, Kemp organised and supported trained nurses who travelled to France in January 1915 to work at the Hopital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois, which became well known for its volunteer corps of artists and writers, including Kathleen Scott, John Masefield, Henry Tonks and Laurence Binyon.Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, Noonan's, Mayfair, London, 5 Dec 2023, lot no. 380. https://www.noonans.co.uk/auctions/calendar/678/catalogue/474185/? Retrieved 23 Jan 2025.
Kemp was friendly with the theologian Marcus Dods, the explorer Francis Younghusband and Albert Schweitzer. She donated the Somerville College Chapel in the University of Oxford as a "house of prayer for all people" (that is, of all religions). During her travels, Kemp developed a strong interest in non-Christian religions. She wished for Somerville College Chapel to be a place where students of all religions could pray. For this reason she encouraged delegates of the 1937 World Congress of Faiths staying in Oxford to use the chapel for their devotions.{{Cite journal|last1=Moulin-Stozek|first1=Daniel|last2=Gatty|first2=Fiona|date=2018|title=A house of prayer for all peoples The unique case of Somerville College Oxford.docx|url=https://www.academia.edu/36153371|journal=Material Religion|language=en|volume=14|pages=83–114|doi=10.1080/17432200.2017.1418478|s2cid=192220204}}
Kemp also donated a 19th-century Italian terracotta derived from the 'Annunciation lunette' in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, by Andrea della Robbia, the subject of which was symbolic to her of the special importance of women in serving God.{{cite book|last1=Manuel|first1=Anne|page=32|title=Breaking New Ground: A History of Somerville College as seen through its Buildings|date=2013|publisher=Somerville College|location=Oxford}}
Kemp bequeathed her collection to the Indian Institute, Oxford, and it subsequently became a formative part of the Eastern Art Dept, Ashmolean Museum.https://blogs.ashmolean.org/easternart/2017/07/18/the-emily-georgiana-kemp-collection/ Retrieved 23 Jan 2025.
Bibliography
- The Face of China (1909)
- The Face of Manchuria, Korea and Russian Turkestan (1910)
- Wanderings in Chinese Turkestan (1914)
- Reminiscences of a Sister, S. Florence Edwards, of Taiyüanfu (1920)
- Chinese Mettle (1921){{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wfiAAAAAIAAJ|title=Chinese Mettle|first=Emily Georgiana|last=Kemp|date=June 20, 1921|publisher=Hodder and Stoughton Limited|via=Google Books}}
- There Followed Him, Women (1927)
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{commons category-inline}}
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Emily Georgiana Kemp}}
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Category:19th-century English women artists
Category:19th-century English women writers
Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford