Portraits, ideals and individuals

Above Left - Memorial tablet to Sir Walter Scott in Jedburgh, a good example of Carrick's work in shallow relief. Carrick based his Scott portrait on the famous marble bust by the sculptor Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey which was widely considered by Scott's contemporaries to be the best likeness of the writer. Chantrey's bust can still be seen at Abbotsford (Carrick also modelled the bronze wreath and panels on the Jedburgh war memorial).

Carrick was also responsible for the memorial tablets and relief portraits of the Rev. George Davidson in the Barony Church, Albany Street, Edinburgh; and Sir William A. Smith, founder of The Boy's Brigade, in Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (Above Right).

Although the above works show Carrick's ability as a formal portrait artist, portraiture was often not a significant feature of his monumental works. Indeed many of the faces of his sculptures lack any individual features and are idealistic. This presumably stemmed from the classical approach widely adopted in monumental sculpture of trying to capture the platonic ideal form, more often referred to as portraying a 'type'. Carrick often used one of his workmen, Jock Souter, as the model for his figures of infantrymen as he thought he was the ideal 'sergeant major type'. Employing Miss Hunt as model, his female allegorical figures at Berwick, Fraserburgh and the Caledonian Insurance Building have more distinctive features but again are essentially portrayals of an ideal rather than an individual, the ideal of motherhood or strong dignified womanhood. Carrick never appears to have shown any ambition as a portrait artist to capture the inner character of his sitters but rather maintained the traditional monumental artists' role of creating works which served to project a desired public image. I think he undestood his own strengths as an artist, his deeply intuitive understanding of shape and form and his gift for composition, and did not see his role as that of bringing out the inner character of a sitter.