Charles Rennie Mackintosh (7 June 1868 – 10 December 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann. Mackintosh was born in Glasgow, Scotland and died in London, England. He is among the most important figures of the Modern Style.
Mackintosh apprenticed and trained as an architectural draughtsman, from the age of 16, attending studies at the Glasgow School of Art. He first worked for John Hutchison and later, once his apprenticeship was finished, went to work for Honeyman and Keppie. He worked hard in his studies winning national and international prizes from his early study period, in both the craft of producing a building, as well as for his artistry. In his free time, he travelled around Scotland and England and developed drawings of plants and buildings, particularly Scottish tower houses and English parish churches and cottages.
Mackintosh, his future wife Margaret MacDonald, her sister Frances MacDonald, and Herbert MacNair met at evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art . They became known as a collaborative group, "The Four", or "The Glasgow Four", and were prominent members of the "Glasgow School" movement. The group exhibited in Glasgow, London, England and Vienna, Austria. These exhibitions helped establish Mackintosh's reputation. The so-called "Glasgow" style was exhibited in Europe and influenced the Viennese Art Nouveau movement known as Sezessionstil (in English, the Vienna Secession) around 1900.
During this period, he also took commissions for free-standing pieces of furniture and showed a number of them in an exhibition of Arts and Crafts works in 1895. In his designs, he found it unnatural to separate his artistry from the formal craft of an architect.
In January 1897, Honeyman and Keppie won a competition to design the new Glasgow School of Art, with a design by Mackintosh, and it is this building for which he is best known. The School clearly demonstrated his skill in using natural forms to elevate and enhance the formality of a structural design.
With his interior designs, he was increasingly aided by his wife, Margaret, who he married in 1900 and whom he came to regard as the better artist. He once said, “I just have talent, Margaret has genius.” Much of this work combines Mackintosh's own designs with those of his wife, whose flowing, floral style complemented his more formal, rectilinear work , including the famous Macintosh Rose.
The Mackintoshes left Glasgow forever in 1914, heading for the South of England, as their style gradually became unfashionable. He had a reputation for arrogance and was also unpopular with other architects, having been openly critical of them.
The couple first stayed in Walberswick, on the Norfolk coast, where he further developed his flower drawings, thought to be for a book to be published in Germany, and later they stayed in Chelsea, during which he was asked by a businessman, Bassett-Lowke, to alter a terrace house in Northampton. This commission turned into one of the most significant of his life.
He also extended Miss Cranston’s Willow Tearooms, with a Dug-Out, and he did some new water-colour flower paintings, which led to designs for printed textiles. In 1920 he was asked to design several houses in Glebe Place, Chelsea and this gave some hope for the future, but little came of this work.
In 1923, they embarked on a holiday to France, that lasted about four years. Mackintosh was inspired to start painting the landscapes and villages they saw as they travelled. The Leicester Art Galleries gave Mackintosh a commission for an exhibition of 50 paintings, but poverty meant they had to sell some paintings to raise cash. He explored what he saw—Fort Mailly, the Port, the Lighthouse, the Rocks—struggling to develop his technique.
From this period, 41 watercolours survive: flower studies, farmhouses, naive views of ships unloading, and the landscapes— rocks, buildings and hillsides. Twelve were painted in Port-Vendres, and the others wherever the Mackintoshes stayed. The graphic style of the artist/architect/designer emerges clearly. He had always seen himself as both painter and designer, and these last works of his life demonstrate them working as one.
Macintosh died in London in December 1928,.and Margaret returned for three months every summer to the Hotel du Commerce until her death in January 1933. It seems probable that it was during one of these visits that Margaret fulfilled her wish to scatter his ashes on the sea at Port-Vendres.
https://scotlandcitytours.com/_next/ima ... =1920&q=75
.( The roses in the back garden are almost unaffected.- strange!) Apparently this growth stimulant.is.supposed to give posotve results within a week. We shall see!
I now just need to go ahead, stop procrastinating and get them done. Maybe a podcast would help?
But everyday life will continue as usual for normal people.
