Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Architectural Work, Design work and paintings

Architect, designer, and painter, born in Glasgow, W Scotland, UK. He attended evening classes at Glasgow School of Art, joined the established firm of Honeyman and Kepple in 1889, and in 1900 married Margaret Mackintosh (1865–1933), with whom he worked in close collaboration. He became a leader of the ‘Glasgow Style’, a movement related to Art Nouveau. His work exercised considerable influence on European design, and included the Glasgow School of Art (1896–1909), and Hill House in Helensburgh (1902–6). His designs included detailed interiors, textiles, furniture, and metalwork. His work was exhibited at the Vienna Secession Exhibition in 1900, and in his later years he turned to painting, producing a series of watercolours (1923–7). He left Glasgow in 1914, and eventually settled in London. In 1924, with his career in decline, he moved to Port-Vendres, S France, where in 2004 an exhibition opened as a prelude to the creation of a permanent centre devoted to his life and work.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – December 10, 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, and watercolourist who was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau in Scotland. All along he attended evening classes in art at the Glasgow School of Art. The group of artists, known as "The Four," exhibited in Glasgow, London and Vienna, and 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 Secession) around 1900.

Architectural Work

In the UK

Amongst his noted architectural works are:

Windyhill, Kilmacolm Hill House, Helensburgh (National Trust for Scotland) House for an Art Lover, Glasgow The Mackintosh House (interior design, reconstructed with original furniture and fitments at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow) Queen's Cross Church, Glasgow Ruchill Church Hall, Glasgow Holy Trinity Church, Bridge of Allan, Stirling Scotland Street School, Glasgow, now Scotland Street School Museum. one of Miss Cranston's Tearooms: see Catherine Cranston for his interior design work on her other tea rooms Hous'hill, interior design of the home of Catherine Cranston and her husband John Cochrane (demolished, furniture in collections) Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Craigie Hall, Glasgow Martyrs' Public School, Glasgow The Royal Highland Fusiliers Museum, Glasgow Former Daily Record offices, Glasgow Former Glasgow Herald offices in Mitchell Street, now The Lighthouse - Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City 78 Derngate, Northampton (interior design for Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke, founder of Bassett-Lowke) 5 The Drive, Northampton (for Bassett-Lowke's brother-in-law)

Unbuilt Mackintosh

Although moderately popular (for a period) in his native Scotland, most of his more ambitious designs were not built. His designs of various buildings for the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition were not constructed, as was his "Haus eines Kunstfreundes" (Art Lover's House) in the same year.

Although the House for An Art Lover was subsequently (1989-1996) built after his death, Mackintosh left many unbuilt designs.

Railway Terminus, Concert Hall, Alternative Concert Hall, Bar and Dining Room, Exhibition Hall Science and Art Museum Chapter House Liverpool Cathedral - Anglican Cathedral competition entry

Although Mackintosh's architectural output was fairly small he had a considerable influence on European design.

Design work and paintings

Mackintosh also worked in interior design, furniture, textiles and, metalwork.

Later in life, disillusioned with architecture, Mackintosh worked largely as a watercolourist, painting numerous landscapes and flower studies (often in collaboration with Margaret, with whose style Mackintosh's own gradually converged) in the Suffolk village of Walberswick (to which the pair moved in 1914). His House for an Art Lover was finally built in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park in 1996, and the University of Glasgow (which owns the majority of his watercolour work) rebuilt a terraced house Mackintosh had designed, and furnished it with his and Margaret's work (it is part of the University's Hunterian Museum). The Glasgow School of Art building (now renamed "The Mackintosh Building") is regularly cited by architectural critics as among the very finest buildings in the UK. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society tries to encourage a greater awareness of the work of Mackintosh as an important architect, artist and designer. Hudson) John McKean Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Architect, Artist, Icon (Lomond) illustrated by Colin Baxter David Brett Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Poetics of Workmanship (1992) Timothy Neat Part Seen Part Imagined (1994) John McKean Charles Rennie Mackintosh Pocket Guide