Biography
Elizabeth Watt was one of five children a prominent Edinburgh solicitor who lived in the fashionable Morningside district of Edinburgh.
She had graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in Law in or around 1924 and was licensed to practise in both Scotland and England, but worked only in England. She wasn't the first female law graduate in the UK, but she was subsequently the first woman allowed to practise law without male supervision.
In the mid to late 1920s Miss Watt was working in London. By 1935 or 1936 she was living in a reasonably affluent part of London with the grand name of Palace Court where there are still fashionable apartments. Around that time she had also established the first all female law firm in the UK.
In addition to being a prominent solicitor, during the early 1930s Elizabeth Watt began collecting contemporary and modern English paintings, and other art works, and this continued for the next 50 years or more.
Over many decades, Elizabeth Watt clearly socialised with many avant-garde artists, particularly members of the London Artists' Association. Some of these appear to have had connections to the small, picturesque, Northamptonshire village of Aynho, and this may be what introduced her to the village in the early part of the Second World War.
In 1942 she was recorded as living in 'Number 17 Aynho' and also having bought some adjoining land where she intended to build a new house after the war.
In or around 1944, she became a Conveyancer in the Ministry of Aircraft Production, which is remarkable because there were still less than 200 women solicitors practising in the UK at that time.
After the Second World War Elizabeth Watt continued her successful career and also continued to collect modern and contemporary paintings and sculptures, including many by world-famous artists. In 1956-7, she commissioned the architect Raymond Erith to build her a "small" house (or possibly re-model an existing house) at Aynho named 'The Pediment', Croughton Road, Aynho, Northamptonshire, OX17 3BA. Raymond Erith was a very highly regarded contemporary architect who worked in the Classical tradition. A later addition to the property was built specifically to house Miss Watt's growing art collection.
At the time of her death in October 1989, Elizabeth Watt had accumulated art works to the value of £1.8million. Having no children - she remained a spinster - some of these artworks were bequeathed to the Tate, Ashmolean, Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Holburne Museum, Bath.
'Her bequest, which totals more than 50 items, includes bronzes by Epstein, Leon Underwood and Emilio Greco, but the real significance of the collection is the English paintings from the 1920s to the 1950s.' (The Herald, Scotland, May 1990).
Ann Walker (neice)