Sculpture in Scotland includes all visual arts operating in three dimensions in the borders of modern Scotland. Durable sculptural processes traditionally include carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material), 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.
Among the most important survivals of Pictish culture are about 250 carved stones. Class I stones are largely unshaped and include incised animals, everyday objects and abstract symbols. Class II stones are carefully shaped slabs dating after the arrival of Christianity in the eighth and ninth centuries, with a cross on one face and a wide range of symbols on the reverse. Class III stones are elaborately shaped and incised cross-slabs, some with figurative scenes. Items of metalwork have been found throughout Pictland. Dál Riata in the west of Scotland was a cross-roads between the artistic styles of the Picts and those of Ireland. There is evidence for the production of high-status jewellery, hanging bowls and other items that indicate that it was one of the locations where the Insular style was developed, which became common across Great Britain and Ireland. The most significant survivals in sculpture in Insular art are high crosses, large free-standing stone crosses, usually carved in relief with patterns, biblical iconography and occasionally, inscriptions. Viking art avoided naturalism, favouring stylised animal motifs to create its ornamental patterns and later ribbon-interlace and plant motifs became fashionable. In the late Middle Ages, examples of sculpture are extant as part of church architecture and a small number of significant crafted items have also survived. These include highly decorated sacrament houses, carving and monumental effigies. The greatest group of surviving sculptures from this period are from the West Highlands, beginning in the fourteenth century on Iona under the patronage of the Lordship of the Isles. There are also examples of carved chests and chess pieces.
Scotland's ecclesiastical art paid a heavy toll as a result of Reformation iconoclasm, with the almost total loss of medieval religious sculpture. The tradition of stone and wood carving continued in royal palaces, the great houses of the nobility and even the humbler homes of lairds and burgesses. From the seventeenth century, there was elaborate use of carving in carved pediments, fireplaces, heraldic arms and classical motifs. Plasterwork also began to be used, often depicting flowers and cherubs. Many grand tombs for Scottish nobles were situated in Westminster Abbey, rather than in Scottish churches, but there are a few examples as fine as those in England. As in England, sculpture was dominated by foreign professionals. After the Acts of Union in 1707 there was very little patronage for large and expensive works of art in Scotland. The development of the Grand Tour led to the buying of artistic works including sculpture and interest in classical and Renaissance styles and Scots became the major figures in the trade in antique sculpture. With the growth of civic development, there was an increasing demand for public statuary and the portrait bust also became popular. Commissions of new statuary tended to be in relatively cheap lead and even more economical painted or gilded plaster. From the late eighteenth century there are a handful of examples of work from Scottish artists.
While opportunities and training for painters had made advances by the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Scottish tradition of professional sculpture was slower to emerge. There was a movement for the erection of major monuments, representing national sentiments and often focused on national figures. The troubled National Monument of Scotland in Edinburgh remained controversial and failed to gain a consensus on its design. The first significant Scottish sculptor to pursue their career in Scotland was John Steell. This trend reached fruition in the next generation and a recognisable national school was established. Public sculpture was boosted by the centenary of Burns' death in 1896. The late nineteenth century saw the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland. The major project of the Scottish National War Memorial within Edinburgh Castle, provided opportunities for sculptors, many of whom were drawn from Edinburgh College of Art, helping to cement an Arts and Craft ethos. However, a few artists pursued a more modernist agenda. After the Second World War a new generation of artists emerged, often more directly influenced by modernism. The establishment of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh in 1960 provided new possibilities for the display of sculpture. The 1970s saw the emergence of installation and environmental art. In the late twentieth century, new sources of direct government arts funding encouraged greater experimentation. Although the first sculpture park in Scotland was established in 1955, it was in the late 1970s and 1980s that they began to be fully developed. Ideas-based art began to dominate Scottish sculpture from the mid 1980s. A number of women sculptors, public artists and installation artists rose to prominence in what had been a male -dominated area. Particularly significant were artists involved with the Transmission Gallery and Variant magazine in Glasgow. From the 1990s Scottish sculptural arts began to gain international attention.
Prehistory
Stone Age
Scotland was occupied by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from around 8500 BCE, who were highly mobile boat-using people making tools from bone, stone and antlers.P. J. Ashmore, Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland: an Authoritative and Lively Account of an Enigmatic Period of Scottish Prehistory (London: Batsford, 2003), , p. 46. From about 3000 BCE they introduced the many standing stones and circles such as those at Stenness on the mainland of Orkney, which date from about 3100 BCE.C. Wickham-Jones, Orkney: a Historical Guide (Birlinn, 2007), , p. 28. These were part of a pattern that developed in many regions across Europe at about the same time.F. Lynch, Megalithic Tombs and Long Barrows in Britain (Botley: Osprey, 1997), , p. 9. Probably the oldest examples of portable visual art to survive from Scotland are carved stone balls, or petrospheres, that date from the late Neolithic era. They are a uniquely Scottish phenomenon, with over 425 known examples. Most are from modern Aberdeenshire,"Carved stone ball found at Towie, Aberdeenshire", National Museums of Scotland, retrieved 14 May 2012. but a handful of examples are known from Iona, Skye, Harris, Uist, Lewis, Arran, Hawick, Wigtownshire and fifteen from Orkney, five of which were found at the Neolithic village of Skara Brae.D. N. Marshall, "Carved Stone Balls", Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 108, (1976/77), pp. 62–3. Many functions have been suggested for these objects, most indicating that they were prestigious and powerful possessions. Their production may have continued into the Iron Age.J. Neil, G. Ritchie and A. Ritchie, Scotland, Archaeology and Early History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd end., 1991), , p. 46. The complex carved circles and spirals on these balls can be seen mirrored in the carving on what was probably a lintel from a chambered cairn at Pierowall on Westray, Orkney, which seem to be part of the same culture that produced carvings at Newgrange in Ireland.M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), , pp. 10–11.
Other items to survive from the period include elaborate carved stone maceheads, often found in burial sites, such as that found at Airdens in Sutherland, which has a pattern of interlocking diamond-shaped facets, similar to those found across Neolithic Britain and Europe. In 2009 the Westray Wife was discovered at the site of a Neolithic village at Links of Noltland near Grobust Bay on the north coast of Westray, a lozenge-shaped figurine that is believed to be the earliest representation of a human face ever found in Scotland. The face has two dots for eyes, heavy brows and an oblong nose and a pattern of hatches on the body could represent clothing. Two more figurines were found at the site in 2010 and 2012.
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age began in Scotland about 2000 BCE as new metallurgical practices reached the region.C. Scarre, Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe: Perception and Society During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 125. From this period there are extensive examples of rock art. These include cup and ring marks, a central depression carved into stone, surrounded by rings, sometimes not completed. These are common elsewhere in Atlantic Europe and have been found on natural rocks and isolated stones across Scotland. The most elaborate sets of markings are in western Scotland, particularly in the Kilmartin district. The representations of an axe and a boat at the Ri Cruin Cairn in Kilmartin, and a boat pecked into Wemyss Cave, are probably the oldest two-dimensional representations of real objects that survive in Scotland. Similar carved spirals have also been found on the cover stones of burial cists in Lanarkshire and Catterline.V. G. Childe, The Prehistory Of Scotland (London: Taylor and Francis, 1935), p. 115. There are also elaborate carved stone battle-axes found in East Lothian, Aberdeenshire and Lanarkshire. These show little sign of use or wear, so may be symbolic representations of power, rather than designed as weapons.M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), , p. 12.
Elaborate metal weaponry includes bronze leaf swords and ceremonial shields of sheet bronze made in Scotland between 900 and 600 BCE.M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), , p. 13. The Migdale Hoard is an early Bronze Age find at Skibo Castle that includes two bronze axes; several pairs of armlets and anklets, a necklace of forty bronze beads, ear pendants and bosses of bronze and jet buttons.J. Anderson,(1901) "Notice of a hoard of bronze implements, and ornaments, and buttons of jet found at Migdale, on the estate of Skibo, Sutherland, exhibited to the society by Mr. Andrew Carnegie of Skibo". Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, retrieved 21 Aug 2011."Anklets of Bronze" National Museums Scotland, retrieved 29 April 2008. There are also a number of smaller items of metalwork from the late Bronze Age found at the Sculptor's Cave, Covesea in Morayshire."Site Record for Sculptor's Cave Covesea", Historic Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland, retrieved 4 March 2014.