Alexander Carrick

Alexander Carrick RSA (20 February 1882 – 1966) was a Scottish sculptor. He was one of Scotland's leading monumental sculptors of the early part of the 20th century. He was responsible for many architectural and ecclesiastical works as well as many war memorials executed in the period following World War I. As head of sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, and as a leading member of the Royal Scottish Academy, had a lasting influence on Scottish sculpture.

Alexander Carrick was born in 1882, the son of a blacksmith in the small town of Musselburgh, just east of Edinburgh. In 1897 he enrolled as a student at Edinburgh College of Art and was apprenticed as a stonemason working in the yard of one of the prominent monumental sculptors of the period, Birnie Rhind. He won the Queen's Prize allowing him to go to London to study for two years at the South Kensington College under the French-born sculptor Professor Édouard Lantéri. He then returned to Edinburgh, spending a further two years working under another of the leading Scottish sculptors of the period, Pittendrigh MacGillivray.

In the years running up to World War I Carrick was to become a regular exhibitor at the RSA exhibitions, his exhibition works including A Boy Putting a Stone, A Girl Skipping, and Saint Cecilia. He also established his reputation as a monumental artist working on prestigious construction projects such as the Usher Hall and the Scotsman Building, both in Edinburgh; restoration works at Eilean Donan Castle and St. Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall; and also carrying out extensive work in the unusual Saint Conan's Kirk at Loch Awe. Whilst at the Edinburgh College of Art, Carrick met his wife, Janet Ferguson MacGregor, who was studying painting there, and the couple were married in 1914. Their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1915, (followed later by Anne, who herself became an artist).

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