Born on 10.06.1873 in Paris. Georges Scott (a French citizen despite the English-sounding name) was a son of an engraver and illustrator. He was a student of Ed. Detaille. He started his career in the 1890s and worked as war correspondent for the newsmagazine ‘I’ Illustration’ during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. When war broke out in 1914, he was mobilized into the French army and was able to continue his work as artist-illustrator for that same prestigious publication, producing many renowned and now famous works dealing with the Great War.
Georges Scott worked from sketches and photographs that he made first on the spot and illustrated many heroic accounts. Most of his works were originally printed in lavish two-page color spreads in ‘I ‘Illustration’ or as cover pages and were reprinted in magazines and books in many countries, both during and after the war.
He continued a long and successful artistic career after the Armistice, still working as a war-correspondent/illustrator for ‘l’Illustration’ during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 65 and afterwards during the early part of the Second World War. Many of his original works are now in the ‘Musée de l’Armée’ in Paris.
Georges Scott visited Macedonia around 1913, during the Balkan wars and he produced several watercolors and oil paintings from Pirin Macedonia, more precisely the Greek-Bulgarian battles around Kresna and its surroundings. One example, an oil painting titled: “The crossing at Strymon River at the Kresna Straights, July 1913” is in the collection of the National Historical Museum, Athens Greece. Two other watercolors entitled “Greek Soldier at Kresna” and “Greek Soldiers at Livounovo 1913” are sold by auction house Drouot-Richelieu, Paris France on 22.03.2010 (lot number 77).
