page_title: Sculpture in Scotland
section_title: Early twentieth century
hierarchical_section_title: Sculpture in Scotland / Modern era / Early twentieth century
caption_attribution_description: English: Our Lady of the Isles, by Hew Lorimer, on South Uist.
context_page_description: Sculpture in Scotland includes all visual arts operating in three dimensions in the borders of modern Scotland. Durable sculptural processes traditionally include carving and modelling, in stone, metal, clay, wood and other materials. In the modern era these were joined by assembly by welding, modelling, moulding and casting. Some installation art can also be considered to be sculpture. The earliest surviving sculptures from Scotland are standing stones and circles from around 3000 BCE. The oldest portable visual art are carved-stone petrospheres and the Westray Wife is the earliest representation of a human face found in Scotland. From the Bronze Age there are extensive examples of rock art, including cup and ring marks and elaborate carved stone battle-axes. By the early Iron Age Scotland had been penetrated by the wider European La Tène culture, and a few examples of decoration survive from Scotland. There are also decorated torcs, scabbards, armlets and war trumpets. The Romans began military expeditions into what is now Scotland from about 71 CE, leaving a direct sculptural legacy of distance slabs, altars and other sculptures.
context_section_description: The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw the emergence of the Glasgow School, a term that is used for a number of loose groups based around the city. The most important grouping, active from about 1890 and known as "The Four" or the "Spook School", included acclaimed architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928). They produced a distinctive blend of influences, including the Celtic Revival, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Japonisme, which found favour throughout the modern art world of continental Europe and helped define the Art Nouveau style. Beside important buildings and paintings, Mackintosh also produced significant and influential objects, including his 1904 designs for an order desk chair for the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, based on a highly geometrised version of the willow tree, and his Revolving Bookcase for Hous'hill, which prefigured the international style of the next generation.
  The major project of the Scottish National War Memorial within Edinburgh Castle, built by Robert Lorimer (1864–1929) to commemorate the dead of the First World War from 1924 to 1927, provided opportunities for sculptors, many of whom were drawn from Edinburgh College of Art. These included Percy Portsmouth (1874–1953), Alice Meredith Williams (1880–1934), and her husband Morris Meredith Williams (1881–1973), Alexander Carrick (1882–1966), Pilkington Jackson (1887–1973) and Phyllis Bone (1894–1972). The project helped cement an Arts and Craft ethos in Scottish sculpture, which was perpetuated Carrick's students Tom Whalen (1903–75) and Hew Lorimer (1907–93), the son of the architect Robert. Lorimer briefly studied with the leading Arts and Crafts sculptor Eric Gill and contributed several major works of public sculpture, including the 27 feet (8 m) high granite Our Lady of the Isles (1957), situated on South Uist.
  In contrast to the prevailing Arts and Crafts ethos in Scotland, influences from contemporary Europe were contributed to sculpture by J. D. Fergusson, best known as one of the Scottish Colourists. As in his painting, his sculpture, like the bronze bust Eastre (Hymn to the Sun) (1924), incorporated a modernist sensibility. Contemporary developments were also significant in the career of Benno Schotz. Born in Estonia of Jewish descent, he originally came to Glasgow as an engineer, but changed to sculpture, producing work influenced by Auguste Rodin and Jacob Epstein. His works included the female figure of The Lament (1943), which focused on the anguish of the Holocaust. His influence was extended by his tenure as head of Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art. Eric Schilsky (1898–1974), born in England, worked in the existing tradition of modelling and carving, but his work had a European sensibility that was particularly influential during his time as director of sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art.
caption: Hew Lorimer's  Our Lady of the Isles (1957) on South Uist
exif: {}