JOHN HENRY LORIMER (Edinburgh 1856 – Pittenweem, Scotland 1936)
Old Lady and Her Pets, Posed by Mrs. William Sommerville
Signed and dated in the lower right J.H. Lorimer. 1901 –
oil on canvas, in its original giltwood Arts and Crafts frame
51 ½ x 42 ½ inches (130.81 x 107.91 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Property of an Estate, Delray Beach, Florida until 2022
EXHIBITED
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1901, no. 254
London, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, 1902, no. 55
London, New English Art Club
LITERATURE
The Royal Scottish Academy 1826 – 1916, James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow, 1917, p. 223
May C. Fenoulhet, John Henry Lorimer, Scottish Artist 1856 – 1936, A Critical Biography, volume 1, University of Edinburgh, 1990, pp. 132, 214, & XX, no. 84, (as unlocated)
Charles Baile de Laperriere, The Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitors 1826 – 1990, volume 3, Hilmarton Manor, 1991, p. 74, no. 254
Charlotte Lorimer in the 2021 – 2022 exhibition Reflections The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, wrote of her great-great-uncle “As a man – white, wealthy, able-bodied, unmarried – J.H. had more opportunity for creativity than many in other strata of society. Yet he used that opportunity to tell the stories of those less visible than him: his mother, his sisters, his nieces, their [Guyanese] nanny. His first paintings, both in watercolour and oil, were completed with or for women. His first portrait, his first double portrait and his first genre painting all featured women. His first submission to the Paris Salon centered on a woman of colour. Women were the inspirations, confidants and champions of John Henry Lorimer, a Scottish painter often plagued by self-doubt yet determined to brush the beauty and strength of femininity onto his canvas”.[1]
John Henry Lorimer descended from a family long involved in the arts dating back to 1377 when a “Frater Thomas Lorimer, Pictor” was paid by King Robert II of Scotland possibly for illuminating manuscripts.[2] Lorimer notably combined in his portraiture “Dutch clarity of representation” stemming from his love and deep appreciation of the old masters with “the tradition of informal but character revealing portraiture of the Scottish past”.[3] Yet having trained in Paris and worked in London, Lorimer could not have remained unaffected by modern art.
Lorimer studied at the Edinburgh Academy until 1871, followed by Edinburgh University and the School of Design. Astonishingly he first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1873 at the age of sixteen, when he had just begun to seriously study art. In 1875 he enrolled in the Royal Scottish Academy under the tutelage of George Paul Chalmers and William Taggart. In 1886 he went to Paris where he studied in the atelier of Carolus – Duran who “emphasized the definition of form by means of values - gradations of lights and dark tones. Those values were to be put down broadly and rapidly. Through the use of lights and darks, form was defined, creating images”.[4] Lorimer also had the means to travel and in 1886 visited Holland, and took other trips to Spain, Italy and Algiers.
In 1890 he was living in London, but his heart always remained at Kellie Castle in Scotland where his family resided. Located in the East Neuk countryside overlooking the coast of Fife, today it is a National Trust for Scotland property, filled with the art and objects of the Lorimer family. A ruin when the family took possession in 1878; over the years they restored the interiors and gardens turning it into their sanctuary.[5] These rooms and surrounding grounds served as the inspiration and setting for the majority of Lorimer’s most notable works of genre.
During Lorimer’s Dutch sojourn he was quite taken with Nicolaes Maes’ Old Woman Saying Grace, Known as The Prayer Without End now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. He felt Maes’s work recalled his master, as the old woman’s soft wrinkled skin evoked Rembrandt’s studies of old people in Leiden.[6] Once realized the emulation of such sources for Mrs. Sommerville’s face and hands are obvious. Further utilized are the lessons of Carolus – Duran, the lighting of her face, powerfully rendered knitting hands, charming parrot, winsome Scottie and cushioned chair contrasted against the darkness of her clothing and background coalesce to create this memorable portrayal.
Further formative inspiration can be found in the works of two painters he particularly admired John Everett Millais’ Mrs. Heugh at the age of 93 with a Parrot and James Abbott McNeil Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 known as Whistler’s Mother. Both feature seated, introspective elderly women, viewed in profile, wearing dark dresses with white lace caps in simple interiors. While masterworks in their own right, the portrayals of these aged women are disquieting. Such sentiment would have been alien to Lorimer, whose first and greatest supporter was his mother, herself a gifted painter, musician and scholar.[7] In this portrait Mrs. Sommerville’s personality shines forth as engaged, industrious and lively. Lorimer also typically included details that defined the sitter’s life.[8] Other characteristic traits of the painter were the use of unusual chairs, as well as scattered highlights of red in the composition.[9] Lorimer was very particular about the carved gilt wood frames he designed for his works. The patterning of Mrs. Sommerville’s frame is thought to have been inspired by the Scottish wild roses in Kellie Castle’s garden.[10] The titling of the work Old Lady with her Pets, Posed by Mrs. William Sommerville underlines the fact “that many of Lorimer’s best portraits are akin to genre”. When exhibited in 1901 at the Royal Scottish Academy to “excellent notices”, Lorimer had just returned from London to take up permanent residence in Edinburgh.[11] Painting such an emphatically Scottish image along with its accompanying accolades must have felt like a true homecoming.
Perhaps no higher praise of the artist was given than by James L. Caw, the director of the Scottish National Gallery and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery who wrote in 1908 of Lorimer “Marked by keenly sensitive perception of light and unusual feeling for beauty, the spirit revealed in the best of Lorimer’s pictures is more kindred to the fascinating intimacy of Vermeer of Delft than is that of any modern with whose work I am acquainted”.[12]
We would sincerely like to thank Elizabeth Cumming of the University of Edinburgh; Antonia Lawrence – Allen of the National Trust for Scotland; and Charlotte Lorimer, co-curator of Reflections: The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, for their invaluable contributions to the writing of this entry.
[1] Charlotte Lorimer, “Femininity” in Reflections, The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2021, p. 57.
[2] May C. Fenoulhet, John Henry Lorimer, Scottish Artist 1856 – 1936, A Critical Biography, op.cit., p. 5.
[3] Ibid, pp. 7, 12, 16.
[4] Ibid, pp. 14, 47, 49.
[5] Christopher Wood, “John Henry Lorimer” in The Dictionary of Victorian Painters, Antique Collector’s Club,
Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1989, p. 291; May C. Fenoulhet, op.cit., pp. 70, 187; and Antonia Lawrence Allen, “Home” in Reflections, The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, op.cit., pp. 59, 63.
[6] May C. Fenoulhet, op.cit., p. 189.
[7] Charlotte Lorimer, op.cit., p.48.
[8] Charlotte Lorimer written communication dated May 12, 2023.
[9] May C. Fenoulhet, op.cit., p. 11.
[10]Elizabeth Cumming “Introduction” in Reflections, The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, op.cit., p. 10; Elizabeth Cumming written communication dated April 30, 2023; and Antonia Lawrence – Allen written communication dated May 2, 2023.
[11]May C. Fenoulhet, op.cit., pp. 113, 121, 214.
[12]James L. Caw, Scottish Painting Past and Present, 1620 – 1908, Kingsmead Reprints, Bath, 1908, p. 423.