{{Short description|British painter, sculptor and medallist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Margaret May Giles''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|RWA|FRIBA}} (20 May 1868 – 31 March 1949) was a British painter, sculptor, and medallist.<ref name="Landow">{{Cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/giles/hero2.html|title=Margaret Giles's life and career|author= George Landow|author-link= George Landow (professor)|website=www.victorianweb.org|access-date=1 September 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/chemicaldiscover00tildrich/chemicaldiscover00tildrich_djvu.txt|title=Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century|author=Sir William A. Tilden|publisher=George Routledge & Sons|year=1917|location=London}}</ref> She was a member of the Society of Medallists and exhibited at their first exhibition in 1898 which was held at the Dutch Gallery in London, where her piece "Two Medals" was favorably critiqued.
==Biography== Giles was born in Clifton, Bristol, the daughter of Richard William Giles, a barrister, and Frances Elizabeth Giles.<ref name="Mapping">{{cite news|title=Margaret May Giles RWA, FRIBA|url=http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1203122173|access-date=20 June 2017|work=Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951|archive-date=14 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220314121822/https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1203122173|url-status=dead}}</ref> Her older sister was the painter Frances Giles. Margaret was educated at Kensington High School and in Brussels and Heidelberg.<ref name="Landow"/> She spent eight years at the National Art Training School, NATS, in London.<ref name="Mapping"/> Among her contemporaries at NATS, which became the Royal College of Art in 1896, were a number of other female sculptors including Ruby Levick, Esther Moore, Florence Steele, Lilian Simpson and Lucy Gwendolen Williams.<ref name="Beattie">{{cite book|author=Susan Beattie|publisher=Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press|year=1983|title=The New Sculpture |ISBN= 0300033591}}</ref> During the 1890s Giles won a number of national art prizes with her model ''Hero'' winning the Art Union of London's statuette competition in 1895.<ref name="Mapping"/><ref name="Beattie"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/stories/a-look-at-britains-neglected-professional-women-sculptors|title= A look at Britain's neglected professional women sculptors|date=23 November 2020|author=Pauline Rose|website=Art UK|access-date=23 November 2021}}</ref> Giles was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London, with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and with the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, of which she was a member.<ref name="GMWaters">{{cite book|author=Grant M. Waters|publisher=Eastbourne Fine Art|year=1975|title=Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950}}</ref><ref name="Beattie"/> At the Royal Academy she showed a number of sculptures, reliefs and medals, including one for hospital nurses and another for the Royal Horticultural Society.<ref name="Landow"/> Between 1884 and 1912 Giles also exhibited works at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy and with the Ridley Art Club.<ref name="Landow"/> She married engineer Bernard Maxwell Jenkin in 1898.<ref name="Mapping"/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *{{Art UK bio}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Giles, Margaret}} Category:1868 births Category:1949 deaths Category:19th-century English sculptors Category:19th-century English women artists Category:20th-century English sculptors Category:20th-century English women artists Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art Category:Artists from Bristol Category:19th-century English medallists Category:20th-century English medallists Category:English women sculptors Category:People from Clifton, Bristol Category:20th-century British women sculptors