In the Grainger Museum there is a photograph of Cyril Scott, labelled by Percy Grainger “Cyril Scott as he looked when I first met him” (frontispiece). The image captures Scott in 1896, when he was seventeen years old and had only recently made the decision to focus his energies primarily on composition rather than performance. The photograph depicts a figure leaning against a doorway in a straw boater tilted to shadow one eye, the other eye looking out at the camera in a trenchant stare. Scott's expression is one of affected disdain—the penetrating gaze of a youth attempting to perform the worldly gravitas he is yet to attain.

The image portrays Scott on the cusp of a defining moment in the formation of his personal and professional identity. Though he was innately predisposed to elegance, the following years cemented Scott's devotion to the propagation of beauty in everyday life. Though already attracted to the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites, he defined his compositional ideal during this period according to the style and was exposed to broader aesthetic concerns, particularly those of the symbolists he encountered through his friendship with Stefan George in Frankfurt. And though he had always been troubled by his experiences of conventional religion, the years around the turn of the century saw him introduced to the alternative spiritual traditions that ultimately came to shape his outlook and public reputation.