Miss Katherine Elizabeth Wallis

Born 1861
Died 14 December 1957

Active: 1897 - 1914

Country of birth: Canada

Country of death: United States

Sculptor

Born in Peterborough, Ontario. She studied art first in Edinburgh and then at the Royal College of Art, London. It was here that she began sculpting and won the College's bronze medal and the Modellers' Free Scholarship. After two years at the Royal College, she went to Paris to study under the noted Swiss born sculptor of animals, Oscar Waldmann (1856-1937). Wallis exhibited in Paris (the Exposition Universelle, the Spring Salon of the Artists Français and the Societé Nationale des Beaux Arts), as well as regularly showing work in Britain. She served as a nurse in the Canadian Hospital in Paris during the First World War and was decorated by the French and British governments. At the end of the war, Wallis spent several years living and exhibiting in Canada. Later she returned to Paris, where she became the first Canadian to be elected Societaire of the Societé Nationale des Beaux Arts for her sculpture 'La Lutte pour la Vie' (1929). She left France at the beginning of the Second World War and took up residence in Santa Cruz, California, where she lived until her death.

Citing this record

'Miss Katherine Elizabeth Wallis', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib5_1210623134, accessed 29 May 2023]