SMM+S

jimmcginlay · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:41 pm Post subject: Hew Lorimer (1907 - 1993)

The following is some very basic information on the sculptor Hew Lorimer, largely taken from Duncan MacMillan’s excellent essay for the catalogue for Lorimer’s exhibition at the Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, 1988.

Lorimer was one of the leading Scottish sculptors of the mid 20th century onwards. Son of architect Sir Robert Lorimer he studied at Edinburgh College of Art under Alexander Carrick and was influenced by English sculptor Eric Gill with whom he lived and worked for four months in 1934. Like Gill Lorimer ‘s work concentrated on the religious and spiritual. In later life he converted to Catholicism and many of his works adorn Scottish chapels. During WWII he moved back to his family home at Kellie Castle in Fife which was previously restored by his grandfather but was by then in a state of neglect. Lorimer set about restoring the house and creating the gardens. The house is now in the hands of the National Trust and many of Lorimer’s works and Studio can still be seen there.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Lorimer

http://www.ntseducation.org.uk/pdf/lorimer.pdf

Synopsis:
Born in Edinburgh, 22nd May 1907. Son of architect Sir Robert Lorimer.

Educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh.

1928 Attended Magdalen College, Oxford for one year.

1929 Spent six months with architect T. Aikman Swann, Edinburgh.

1930 Married Mary Mcleod Wylie.

1930 Enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art to study architecture. Later changed to study sculpture under Alexander Carrick.

1934 Lorimer had his Diploma Show at ECA and moved to England to work with Eric Gill at Piggotts, Buckinghamshire for four months to study Gill’s techniques in letter cutting and direct carving. While staying with Gill Lorimer executed David and East Wind. According to Duncan MacMillan ‘The East Wind can be compared with Gill’s own relief of the East Wind of 1928 and is as close as Lorimer ever came to Gill’s style though in other ways Gill’s influence was profound.

Duncan MacMillan wrote:
‘It was he [Alexander Carrick] in particular who encouraged young Lorimer’s nascent ambition to see his art integrated with his spiritual life. Direct stone carving seemed particularly well-suited to this end. There were the great traditions of Romanesque and Gothic religious sculpture, with which Lorimer had already begun to familiarise himself, to serve as an inspiration. Stone-carving, too, suggests the simplest and most unambiguous realisation of the idea of truth to material, an idea formulated by Owen Jones who spoke of the artist working to realise a metaphor in collaboration with his medium and not forcing it to become ‘an accomplice in his crime against nature’. Carrick himself completed Christ and the Woman of Samaria, an ambitious stone relief, in 1933, for the Reid Memorial Church in Edinburgh. In treatment, it recalls Eric Gill’s Westminster Stations of the Cross. In his Diploma show at Edinburgh College of Art in 1934, Lorimer showed his first significant sculpture, Mother and Child. It, too, shows something of the influence of Gill and his move to Gill’s studio in the same year was therefore a natural one.

1934 Awarded the Andrew Grant Travelling Scholarship. The Seamstress , Broughton Place

1935 Travelled for four months in France on Scholarship with sculptor Tom Whalen studying Romanesque sculpture.

1935 - 39
Christis Rex, a crucifixion for the Dawson Burial Chapel, Fochabers.
Madonna and Child, for Kippen Church
Our Lady Star of the Sea, at Tayport
St. Ninian, St. Andrew, St. Cuthbert and St. Margaret, for the reredos of St. Margaret’s Church, Dunfermline.

1939 – 45 Spent war working for the British Council. Also moved to Fife, first to Pittenweem, then to his family home of Kellie Castle and began restoration works.

1943 Monument to Mrs. Younger and Madonna and Child, All Saint’s Church, St. Andrews.
http://www.allsaints-standrews.org.uk/History/Lorimer.html

Late 1940’s Nisi Dominus Frustra, for Westfield Court, Dalry Road, Edinburgh.

Circa 1949 Carved Tympanum St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Friary, Dundee.

1953 – 1956 Medicine, Science, History, Poetry, Law, Theology and Music, For the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

1954 – 1956 Our Lady of the Isles, Rueval, South Uist.
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/nq/resources/rsascottishart/imagedetails/ourladyoftheisles.asp

1957 Elected R.S.A.. St. Joseph, Kelty, Fife.
1959 St. Joseph and Crucifixion, Convent of the sacred Heart, Kilgraston

1960’S Became active on behalf of the National Trust in setting up the Little Houses Scheme.

1962 Our Lady Star of the Sea or Stella Maris, Catholic Church, Largs.

1963 St. Joseph, Dundee

1966 Ceres, Younger’s Holyrood Brewery

1970 Sold Kellie Castle to the National Trust following the death of his wife.

1984 Honorary LL.D., Dundee University

1986 Awarded C.B.E.. Crucifixion, for the Dundee University Chapel.

Died 1993

Other works:
Heraldic Lions and Garden Urns, Pollock House, Glasgow.
Garden Urns, Gilston House, Fife.
The Flower Girl, Private Collection
The Bull, Carved relief for North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, Fasnakyle, Glen Affric.

Bibliography:
Hew Lorimer, Sculptor, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, 1988.