Great niece backs sculptor in row over feminist Elsie Inglis statue

Kathy McGuinness with her daughter Sophie at one of the Elsie Inglis fundraising events

The great-great niece of feminist Dr Elsie Inglis says she is delighted the Royal sculptor has been chosen to make her statue - despite a bitter row over its commissioning process.

Kathy McGuinness told the BBC she was "extremely grateful to Team Elsie" for working "tirelessly" on the project.

Alexander Stoddart, who had not entered a submission, was approached by the campaign to make the Edinburgh statue.

The move has caused uproar from artists on social media.

Now trustees for the charity, A Statue for Elsie Inglis, have paused the campaign saying "the level of vitriol directed by some contributors" was "bordering on the defamatory".

The row started after the charity trustees planning the statue on the Royal Mile cancelled their competition to find an artist and appointed Mr Stoddart instead.

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It said the rethink came after watching the Queen's cortege in Edinburgh last month, saying the statue "needed to meet with the historical consciousness of the Royal Mile".

However, artists criticised the decision by the charity, which raised over £50,000, saying it ignored its own competition rules.

Sculptors, some of whom had spent hundreds of hours on their competition entries, insisted the move was "wrong" and "unfair".

Elsie Inglis was the aunt of Ms McGuinness's grandfather.

While she said she could not speak for Elsie's other descendants around the world, Ms McGuinness said her immediate family was behind the decision to commission the Royal sculptor.

"Elsie is a huge figure in Edinburgh's history and deserves to be represented by a lasting civic monument of the same calibre as statues of men on the Royal Mile," she said.

"Her statue will be here long after we have all gone so its quality must be timeless, in keeping with other monuments on Edinburgh's historic Royal Mile and respectful of the important place Elsie deserves in Scotland's history."

Elsie Inglis established Scottish Women's Hospitals in Edinburgh in 1914

She added: "We are delighted that Alexander Stoddart will be honouring Elsie with a statue in Edinburgh and that Scotland will finally be giving Elsie the recognition she deserves.

"Through their hard work Team Elsie has ensured generations of girls will see Elsie on an equal footing with the men celebrated in statues throughout Edinburgh, as Elsie tried to achieve in her lifetime."

However, many artists, including East Lothian artist Natasha Phoenix have criticised the the charity's decision.

"It's unfair to open the commission, then while commissions are open, ask a well-established male sculptor with ties to the Royal Family to do the job," she said.

'Suboptimal call'

There was an open call put out in July with a creative brief for artists to submit proposals for the sculpture.

It was understood three artists would be shortlisted and each given £2,000 to build a small scale vision of their proposal. Then from the three sculptures the final one would be selected.

However, the charity running the competition closed down the submission process on 8 October - about two weeks before the deadline.

Artists say they spent months working on proposals they were not given the chance to submit.

The Statue for Elsie Inglis charity said they took "the difficult decision" to suspend the call to artists because the original call was "suboptimal."

It is understood Mr Stoddart - the King's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland - is still to take on the commission.

Dr Inglis, who was born to a wealthy family in 1864, established maternity services for poor women in Edinburgh.

When World War One began in 1914 she wanted to work on the front line, but was told by the war office that women were not allowed.

However, Britain's allies allowed her to help and she set up 17 Scottish women's hospitals for injured soldiers across Europe.

Along with colleagues and associates from the suffragist movement, she raised the equivalent of £53m in today's money to buy medical equipment to help those on the front line.

Plans are for a bronze statue near the site of a maternity hospital she founded on the Royal Mile.

The only women in sculpture in Edinburgh are Queen Victoria and Mary Queen of Scots - neither on the city's historic Royal Mile.