An unsung pioneer of public archaeology, Claire Gaudet (Apr 1869-13 Sep 1945) was born in Kensington, the daughter of a French shipping magnate who became a Freeman of the City of London. Her early life is obscure, pending any archival research (I have relied on publications for this essay), but presumably comfortable; in 1898 we know she sat for a portrait by the Scottish watercolourist P A Hay of Holland Park Row (I don't know if this still exists; nor have I found any other picture of her).

It is only after the turn of the century that Gaudet’s professional life seems to have begun. Her initial artistic interest was in stained glass and she was an exhibitor of designs including ‘"Motleys", Panels for a common hall door in stained glass’, which was shown at the 1904 Universal Exposition in St Louis and elsewhere. The Royal Academy summer exhibition included her ‘Design for an office-door window: Architecture prompted by Inspiration and crowned by Genius’ in 1911 and both ‘Design for colour reproduction for coronation number of an illustrated paper’ and ‘Die Walküre: colour scheme for accompanying working drawing for window’ in 1914. According to newspaper articles she also exhibited at the Paris Salon, while some of her mosaic work could be seen in Westminster Cathedral. It was during her research for the glass that she was "‘bitten’ with archaeology", to quote a 1924 interview, and started a parallel career.

In 1906 Gaudet was awarded the University of London Extension’s Sessional Certificate in Honours for an essay on ‘Architectural Coinage’. Around 1908 she became honorary secretary for the University’s extension lectures, which initially took place at the University but later at the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1910 and 1911 the course of 24 lectures was delivered by Mr Banister Fletcher on ancient architecture (at the BM) and medieval architecture (at the V&A). In 1912 the lecturer was Mr S C Kaines Smith, talking at the BM on Greek Art and National Life; the following year his subject at the V&A was the Nature of Beauty, and in 1914 it was Greek Religion (BM) and Modern Art and National Life (V&A). The Pall Mall Gazette reported in 1913 that "These lectures… are really promoted and organized by Miss Claire Gaudet, a keen archaeological student and writer who has made this one of her principal works for the last five years."

In Oct 1914 The Queen newspaper was glad that Kaines Smith’s lectures ("organised so successfully by the indefatigable hon. secretary") were continuing "during this winter session of strain and worry", as "some mental distraction is absolutely necessary" - but they do not appear to have been repeated in the subsequent war years. However, from Thursday 1st March 1923 we find Gaudet teaching at the BM herself, fittingly, having by then become lecturer and examiner in art to the London County Council. Did she see an opportunity in light of the archaeological interest generated by Tutankhamun? It was certainly timely: in March 1926 The Graphic reported on her beginning the lectures for that year by stating that "…our own people are keener on museums than they used to be, as you will note from the crowds who follow the guides at the British Museum, even when Cup-ties are the rage. The crowd was increased on Saturday, when Miss Claire Gaudet began another course of lectures on recent excavations, a subject of far greater popular interest, as Tutankhamen showed, than most newspapers imagined."

Gaudet’s lectures in the mid-1920s had a much more archaeological focus than the pre-war classes. In 1923 she was talking about ‘Recent Excavations in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean’ at the BM, with the aim "to trace… the various stages of architectural expression" from about 4000 BC, and in 1924 she gave a course on ‘Comparative Archaeology of the Ancient World’ at the BM and Chelsea Polytechnic. She also occasionally lectured outside London, for example at Nottingham University College in Jan 1926.

In 1924 Gaudet was described in the Leeds Mercury (drawing on an interview in the London Evening News) as "a gentle-voiced, silver-haired woman" who "discusses the year 5,000 B.C. with the ease of a scholarly Babylonian", and in the Western Daily Press as "that most eminent of women archaeologists" who "seems to make the men and women who wrought [these relics of vanished civilisations] live again, to link them up with ourselves". It also reported that "Women especially are thronging to the lectures", which covered Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete and the Mediterranean, Ancient Greece and Rome. Making ancient history relevant was certainly important to Gaudet. For example, in 1926 the Northern Daily Mail reported her suggestion in one talk that the WW1 German trenches had been inspired by the passages previously found by German archaeologists at the Assyrian citadel at Asshur.

In February 1926 the Westminster Gazette wrote that "The introduction of a woman-lecturer on archaeology… at the British Museum was so successful three years ago that she has been induced to give another course, which will commence shortly… the new course is to be a ‘popular’ one, and is something of an experiment." Maybe the experiment did not quite work, since after 1926 there is no further mention of her lectures in the press. She had not completely retired, however, for in Feb 1939, at the age of 70, Gaudet was admitted as an Ordinary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. She lived through a second World War, but only just: her obituary appeared in the West London Chronicle in Sep 1945, saying that she had died after a short illness; it made no mention of her achievements, only her father’s. She is buried in Brompton Cemetery with her parents.

Alongside the design work and the lectures, Gaudet also wrote for various newspapers and journals in the 1910s and 1920s: in June 1911 she wrote ‘The Column as an Emblem of Exultation’ for the Coronation number of The Graphic, concluding that "One cannot help feeling that the temporary decorations in Whitehall echo the glory of the Past, and show us that in truth there is… nothing more eminently suitable for the Coronation celebrations". In 1912 she wrote an article for the Architect and Contract Reporter on ‘Shakespeare’s England and London’s First Theatre’, arguing that "the drama had its origin in the pageants and miracle plays enacted at certain church festivals from the very earliest times", which suggested a curious link back to earlier, Classical funerary ceremonies. ‘Fragments of Two Manuscript Poems by Sappho’ appeared in The Athenaeum in Dec 1913 and ‘An Appreciation of Dynamic Symmetry by An English Critic’ in The Spectator in Feb 1920.

There were also several articles for The Graphic on more archaeological subjects, including:

She had previously written about Petrie’s discoveries at Tarkhan in ‘The Domestic Architecture of Egypt during the First Dynasty’ for The Architect in 1912. Gaudet also wrote for the Architectural Review on ‘Akhetaten, the City of the Sun’s Horizon’ in 1921; a letter about a Classical statue recently acquired by the Ashmolean in 1922; and ‘The Unearthing of Roman Oxyrhynchus’ in 1923. She wrote ‘The Hermits of Egypt’ for Country Life in 1923, ‘The Tomb of Osiris at Abydos’ for Sir John Hammerton’s ‘Wonders of the Past’ volumes in 1924, and a series entitled ‘Of Yesterday’s "Sev’n Thousand Years"’ in the Journal of the Society of Architects in 1926, which begins: "We have for some years become familiar with the idea that the spade can and does reveal past history with an accuracy which is no longer questioned" but when ancient libraries are found, as in Mesopotamia, "then indeed may the excavator deem himself lucky in finding corroborative evidence of his science and skill." There is no evidence that she excavated herself but she was clearly a keen student of current research. It is also unclear whether she ever travelled to the countries she wrote about, though in 1912 she presented the V&A with "one of the quaint patchwork and appliqué cotton flags used in the annual festival held at the shrine of Sayyad Salar Masaud at Bahraich in Faizabad, Oudh" in India. Possibly her last published article was a piece on Great Zimbabwe for The Architectural Review in 1930.

During and after the First World War Gaudet had a sideline as a tour guide in London, organising a series of ‘Visits to Buildings of Interest’ in winter 1915, and being listed in the 1919 ‘Blue Guide to London’ as someone who could arrange to "conduct parties to places of interest." In 1921 she was a temporary replacement art teacher at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, and her interest in children is also shown by an article for The Architect in 1920, entitled ‘Beauty and the Child-Mind’, reviewing the Exhibition of Children’s Work at the British Institute of Industrial Art. In 1923 the Daily Herald reported under the headline ‘Prehistoric Prodigies’ that in one of her lectures she "told of seven-year-old children who inscribed some of the most beautiful writings found in excavations in Egypt".

Throughout this time she was living at 120 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where a more famous resident was Sylvia Pankhurst, who moved into two rooms there in 1906, staying until 1909. Their paths certainly crossed, as we know Gaudet was there by 1907, when it is listed as her address in the British Numismatic Journal, of which she was then a rare female member (she was elected in 1906 and resigned in 1910). Whether or not she engaged in any suffragette activity, her Coronation piece for The Graphic does not suggest a rebellious spirit. Indeed in 1924 she is quoted as saying that "Women in all ages have always been — well, shall we say, just women" and that she was "inclined to think that the women of to-day are inferior to those of some of the older civilisations". On the other hand, in the same year she lectured on ‘Early Beliefs’ to Alice Abadam’s Feminist League, which following the partial enfranchisement of 1918 was campaigning to give the vote to women on the same terms as men. Gaudet certainly lived in an interesting neighbourhood: another suffragette, Maud Joachim, was resident at no. 118 in 1909, while after the war the painter (and lover of Siegfried Sassoon) William ‘Gabriel’ Atkin lived at no. 122. A variety of artists patronised the Blue Cockatoo bistro, further along Cheyne Walk.

Whether Gaudet was influenced by any of this bohemian milieu is impossible to say, but perhaps her most personal piece is that on Symmetry, discussing the compositional theories of the artist Jay Hambidge. She concludes: "Is one travelling too far into the realms of phantasy in reading into Mr Hambidge’s theory a connection with the scheme of the universe? One would like to be able to do so and to see in the shell, the plant, the human form, yea, even in its skeleton, together with the work of the Classical Greeks… the language of the ‘rope-stretchers’ of Egypt, the stamp, the mark of infinity upon them!" This search for parallels between the natural and the architectural sounds a little like a (more classical, less surreal) version of the spatial logic of the rather younger Kensington native, student at Chelsea Polytechnic, and frequenter of the Blue Cockatoo, Paul Nash. Maybe Gaudet was more of a modernist than she let on...