Description
comprising War Medal , Victory Medal, "Médaille Dévouement Epidémie" 1919 x two (silver), Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française, x two (bronze). Médaille d’honneur pour acte de courage et de dévouement (silver), together with the Grande Médaille de Vermeill from the French Geographical Society to Miss Kemp in 1922 for Chinese Mettle, with dress miniatures
Footnote
Emily Georgiana Kemp was born in 1860 into a wealthy Baptist family who made their money during the industrial revolution, she was one of the first students at the Somerville College, one of the first women's colleges in Oxford, later continuing her studies at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Following her studies Kemp travelled through China, Korea, India, central Asia and the Amazon, she sketched, painted and wrote perceptive journals throughout her travels, turning her focus to the education and welfare of women in these countries, particularly their role in religion.
In 1909 Kemp travelled to China and wrote what would be the first of six books, The Face of China. It would appear that she served as a nurse during the war, spending most of her time in France. However, at the end of the war she decided to continue her travels, and subsequently received the award from the French Geographical Society for writing Chinese Mettle, a travelogue of her time spent in China in 1921. A British woman abroad in Asia was unusual at the time, but during her six month journey through thirteen of China's provinces, she recorded the meeting of the ancient and the modern in a nation scrambling to catch up with the outside world. Her writing details a wide range of subjects from the legacy of the opium trade and the impact of Western religious missionaries on China's mythic culture, to the astonishing efficiency of the new postal system and the ominous rumblings of nearby Japan's threatening militarism. Her books serve as an invaluable glimpse at one of the world's most populous and powerful nations at a precarious period in its history, the period between the Imperial and Communist eras.
Kemp counted many prominent figures amongst her friends, including the theologian Marcus Dods, the explorer Francis Younghusband and Albert Schweitzer; all no doubt drawn to her adventurous nature. She donated the chapel at Somerville College as a 'house for prayer for all people' regardless of their religion, and also donated many of the silks she obtained on her travel to the college's cause. Upon her death in 1939 she donated her diverse collection of art to the Ashmolean museum.