Septimus Edwin Scott (19 March 1879 - 1966; Sunderland, UK)
Scott was born in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England and studied at the Royal College of Art in London. By 1903 he was exhibiting his landscape and portrait paintings at the Royal Academy. He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1919, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1920 and Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1927.

In the course of a long and varied career, Sep Scott exhibited in the Royal Academy and was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society. He became a book illustrator and one of the highest paid and respected of all British poster artists.

As an illustrator, Scott contributed to periodicals including The Graphic and The Red Magazine, painted colour plates for editions of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, and illustrated a number of Ladybird Books. He also illustrated the book An Incurable Disease written under the pseudonym Roland Dunster by Lord Stevenson.

During the First World War he painted propaganda posters for the Ministry of Munitions, and from the 1920s he worked in advertising, painting posters for Lifebuoy soap, Mars chocolate bars and Players cigarettes, among many other products. His art was probably most widely known through railway company posters such as one for the London & North Eastern Railway to advertise rail services to Newcastle's North East Coast Exhibition, which was open from May to October 1929.

Towards the end of his life, during a period when his style had gone somewhat out of vogue, he began working for Leonard Matthews and his trio of comics, Knockout, Sun and Thriller Comics Library.

At first, Scott was used for picture strips, drawing all the adventures of the pirate hunter, Captain Flame, and proving to be a natural born strip artist. Then, when Matthews took over Thriller Comics Library, Scott began to paint the covers. He drew scores of full colour cover paintings, which would, as Leonard Matthews commented, "grace the walls of any stately home", and were, in all probability, largely responsible for the success of the Library and the fact that these comics are so valued today amongst collectors.

Scott also drew a number of short Robin Hood strips for the Library and some fine full-length adventure picture stories including Jane Eyre (no. 31), Pride of the Ring (no. 53), Secret Operator (no. 73) and the splendidly atmospheric, The Dark Shadows of London (no. 156). For a short period, he also painted the occasional cover - and back page - for Comet and Sun and also contributed some paintings for the first Buck Jones Annual (colour plates as well as the cover) and the covers for both issues of the Billy the Kid Book of Picture Stories. Toward the end of his life, Sep Scott drew occasionally for Look and Learn.