Hew Lorimer
Scotland's Silent Sculptor
Katharine Eustace(Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Will be published approx. on 31. January 2027
Book
Hardback
514 pages
978-1-3995-5618-7 (ISBN)
Description
This first full account of the life and work of the sculptor Hew Lorimer RSA (1907-1993) places him squarely within profound social, religious and cultural change in twentieth-century Scotland.
In her revelatory study, Katharine Eustace draws on new primary material and combines illuminating biography with vivid art history. Eustace investigates Lorimer's background and education, while exploring his association with collaborators and with many of Scotland's leading cultural figures, some from fresh and surprising sources. Specially-commissioned photography, many of the works being recorded for the first time, highlights Lorimer's exceptional achievement.
Lorimer has been under-appreciated and overlooked, but here his great public commissions, Scottish Beasties at Fasnakyle hydro-electric power station, Allegories for the National Library of Scotland, and Our Lady of the Isles on South Uist are examined in depth, giving full voice at last to Scotland's silent sculptor.
In her revelatory study, Katharine Eustace draws on new primary material and combines illuminating biography with vivid art history. Eustace investigates Lorimer's background and education, while exploring his association with collaborators and with many of Scotland's leading cultural figures, some from fresh and surprising sources. Specially-commissioned photography, many of the works being recorded for the first time, highlights Lorimer's exceptional achievement.
Lorimer has been under-appreciated and overlooked, but here his great public commissions, Scottish Beasties at Fasnakyle hydro-electric power station, Allegories for the National Library of Scotland, and Our Lady of the Isles on South Uist are examined in depth, giving full voice at last to Scotland's silent sculptor.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
49 colour and 118 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-5618-7 (9781399556187)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Katharine Eustace FSA, is an independent writer on British and European sculpture from 1500 to the present. She has had a long career in local authority, university and national museums and art galleries, always with a sculptural bias.
The numerous exhibitions she has curated, with benchmark catalogues, include Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor 1694-1770 (Bristol, 1982), Let's Not Be Stupid - Richard Deacon (University of Warwick, 1992), and Canova: Ideal Heads (Ashmolean, 1995). From 2004 to 2014 she was editor of the Sculpture Journal. She is joint editor Sculpting Art History, Essays in Memory of Benedict Read (Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, 2018).
Eustace has been a member of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee and Arts Council England's Acceptance-in-lieu Panel. She works with many public bodies, among them ArtUK's sculpture programme and Art Detective. She writes widely on sculpture and its contexts in her book Britannia: Icon on the Coin (Royal Mint, 2016), essays on Lawrence Bradshaw's Karl Marx Memorial for the Henry Moore Institute/Whitechapel Art Gallery (2016), and reviews and articles in the Art Newspaper and the Burlington Magazine.
The numerous exhibitions she has curated, with benchmark catalogues, include Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor 1694-1770 (Bristol, 1982), Let's Not Be Stupid - Richard Deacon (University of Warwick, 1992), and Canova: Ideal Heads (Ashmolean, 1995). From 2004 to 2014 she was editor of the Sculpture Journal. She is joint editor Sculpting Art History, Essays in Memory of Benedict Read (Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, 2018).
Eustace has been a member of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee and Arts Council England's Acceptance-in-lieu Panel. She works with many public bodies, among them ArtUK's sculpture programme and Art Detective. She writes widely on sculpture and its contexts in her book Britannia: Icon on the Coin (Royal Mint, 2016), essays on Lawrence Bradshaw's Karl Marx Memorial for the Henry Moore Institute/Whitechapel Art Gallery (2016), and reviews and articles in the Art Newspaper and the Burlington Magazine.
Content
Acknowledgements
Family Trees by Patric Dickinson
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Part 1: Dynasties and their Houses
1 'The house where I was born'
2 A House and its Family
3 The Wyld Side: and a Brush with Modernism
Part 2: An Education
4 Parental Training: A Paterfamilias
5 Schooling
6 A Step in the Right Direction: Edinburgh College of Art
7 The Right Direction: Sculpture under Alexander Carrick
8 With Eric Gill
Part 3: A Working Life
9 Early Patronage and the Importance of Lettering
10 Studio Practice and the Log Book
11 With Basil Spence at Broughton: A First and Last Commission
12 War and Peace
Part 4: The Great Commissions
13 Fasnakyle: The Beasties
14 The National Library of Scotland: The Allegories
15 South Uist: Bana Thighearna Nan Eilean - Our Lady of the Isles
16 A House with Many Mansions
Part 5: The Truce of Age
17 Men of Scotland
18 The Little Houses
19 And Gardens
20 Mary, Mistress of Kellie
21 'The stigma of being ticketed "local"'
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
Family Trees by Patric Dickinson
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Part 1: Dynasties and their Houses
1 'The house where I was born'
2 A House and its Family
3 The Wyld Side: and a Brush with Modernism
Part 2: An Education
4 Parental Training: A Paterfamilias
5 Schooling
6 A Step in the Right Direction: Edinburgh College of Art
7 The Right Direction: Sculpture under Alexander Carrick
8 With Eric Gill
Part 3: A Working Life
9 Early Patronage and the Importance of Lettering
10 Studio Practice and the Log Book
11 With Basil Spence at Broughton: A First and Last Commission
12 War and Peace
Part 4: The Great Commissions
13 Fasnakyle: The Beasties
14 The National Library of Scotland: The Allegories
15 South Uist: Bana Thighearna Nan Eilean - Our Lady of the Isles
16 A House with Many Mansions
Part 5: The Truce of Age
17 Men of Scotland
18 The Little Houses
19 And Gardens
20 Mary, Mistress of Kellie
21 'The stigma of being ticketed "local"'
Afterword
Bibliography
Index