Elizabeth Dempster

Elizabeth Strachan Dempster, ARSA, (23 April 1909 – 17 January 1987) was a Scottish sculptor. Biography Dempster was born on 23 April 1909 in Greenock, Scotland to Elizabeth Watt and Duncan Dempster, a sugar refiner. She was orphaned at an early age. After her parents' deaths, she moved to Edinburgh to be with her guardian, Dr Charles Warr, minister at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh and Honorary Chaplain to the King George VI and later the Queen Elizabeth II. Dempster studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art (1930). Her tutors included the sculptors Alexander Carrick and Norman John Forrest, and she studied alongside the sculptors Hew Lorimer, Thomas W. Whalen and Scott Sutherland. Dempster also trained further in London at Regent Street Polytechnic and at Munich Academy in Germany. In the late 1930s, Dempster was commissioned to produce three large carvings in oak, two of angels and one of the biblical figure Jubal, for the new organ case at St Giles' Cathedral. Her work on the pieces was in danger of being delayed because she had been called up for service as a Red Cross nurse at the outbreak of World War II, however, given the public importance of the work, the Red Cross released her from her duties so that she might complete it.