One of the most moving of the works of art contained in All Saints' Church is the statue of Mother and Child carved by Hew Lorimer. Let us try to understand a little of the man who created this modern work of art.
Hew was the second son of Robert Lorimer, who was the youngest son of Professor James Lorimer and his wife Hannah Stodart. Robert had decided to become an architect at the age of fourteen at around the time that his parents moved to Kellie Castle to begin a restoration project. Robert was knighted in 1911 for his work on the Thistle Chapel in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.
Hew was born in Edinburgh in 1907. He attended Loretto School in Musselburgh, just outside Edinburgh, then entered Magdalen College in Oxford. After a year, he left Oxford and went to France where he studied French, drew castles and churches, and thought about his future. He decided not to return to his studies at Oxford but instead to take courses in Design & Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art. He graduated from the College of Art in 1934 and then became an apprentice to Eric Gill, a Catholic sculptor and stone carver whose studio was based on a medieval mason's yard. After a year as an apprentice, Hew left Eric Gill and soon after this married the artist Mary McLeod Wylie.
Professor James Lorimer had restored Kellie Castle, and after his death in 1890 his wife continued to live there until her death in 1916. At this time their son, Hew's uncle, the painter John Henry Lorimer took up residence in the castle. He also had a home called the Gyles in Pittenweem which he had restored and, after his death in 1936, Hew and his wife moved into the Gyles. At this time Hew's health was poor and he felt that he would benefit from the bracing air of the Fife coast. Kellie Castle was abandoned after John Henry Lorimer's death (he was unmarried), and stood empty and neglected.
In 1941 Hew and his wife Mary moved into Kellie Castle and began a second Lorimer restoration. Living close by in Pittenweem they had watched the Castle deteriorate for five years before realising that they could not stand back and let the efforts of Hew's grandfather go to waste. In the following year, while he was hard at work on the second restoration of Kellie, Hew sculpted the Mother and Child in All Saints'. Hew, who was a deeply religious man, modelled Mary's face on that of his wife (who of course was also named Mary). Marie Louise Moffat writes:
... Mary was built into the pillar to commemorate Mrs Younger who did so much to build, furnish and endow [All Saints'] church. The caretaker at the time, Doddie Gourlay told me what a dreadful mess and dust was caused by taking out the original stone to make way for her. ... Mary is tall, calm and focussed with the child, arms outstretched and holding back her veil. Here we have a wise young woman who had said her "yes" to God and holds up her child to bless us.
At the time that Hew Lorimer undertook to sculpt the Mother and Child he had not gained the reputation as one of Scotland's leading sculptors which he went on to achieve in the following decade. Between 1950 and 1955 he designed and carved the seven allegorical figures (Medicine, Science, History, Poetry, Law, Theology and Music) for the frontage of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. He then worked on Our Lady of the Isles (completed in 1958), a twenty-seven foot high Creetown granite statue of the Mother and Child sited at Rueval on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. He also designed and carved the tympanum at St Francis Friary in Dundee. He continued to undertake many smaller commissions up to the 1970s.
Hew Lorimer died in 1993. Vincent Logan, Bishop of the Diocese of Dunkeld, founded the Hew Lorimer Trust in 1996 to:
... honour Hew's life and promote his work, to ensure the safe keeping of the sculptures at Kellie, and the maintenance of sculptures elsewhere.
Article by: Edmund Robertson