Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson

Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871 - October 291932), also known as Tho. A. R. Kitson, was an American sculptor.

Kitson was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. As a young child she displayed artistic talent, but when her mother attempted to enroll her in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, she was informed that the program did not accept female students.

She began studying with sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson in 1886, and married him in 1893. In 1895 she was the first woman to be admitted to the National Sculpture Society. In 1899, she won honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Francais, and in 1904 won a bronze medal at the St. Louis World's Fair. After the Kitsons separated in 1909, she moved to Farmington, where she maintained a studio until her 1932 death in Boston, Massachusetts.

In the course of her career she created many public monuments, both in conjunction with her husband and on her own. Her best known statue is "The Hiker", a monument commemorating the soldiers who fought in the wars of the United States' turn of the 20th Century Manifest Destiny territorial expansion, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. Around 50 versions of this work can be discovered spread over much of the United States.

Selected works

* The Hiker (Spanish-American War)
* Thaddeus Kosciuszko Sculpture, Boston Public Garden

References

* Opitz, Glenn B , Editor, "Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers", Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986.
* Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, "American Women Sculptors", G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1990.