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Mackintosh Art, Design and Architecture Collection Fine arts With digital objects
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The Downs, Worth Matravers

'As in 'The Village' there are no figures in this view of the Dorset countryside. This absolute lack of human activity gives Mackintosh's pictures an air of eerie, even surreal, desertion. They are formal landscapes... the most dominant feature in this work is the tall telegraph pole, a formal and unnatural element in this gentle Dorset landscape.' (Roger Billcliffe).

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

The Descent of Night

Appears in The Magazine, April 1894. 'The central figure is based upon that used in the 1893 design for a diploma for the GSA and like that in 'The Harvest Moon', has wings like an angel. Here, however, she appears naked and her outstretched arms and hair merge and are transformed into barren tree-like forms. These descend to the horizon behind which the sun is gradually disappearing under the feet of the winged figure. From the bottom of the picture, and directly beneath the sun, rises a flight of menacing birds. They are presumably nocturnal birds of prey and they seem to be flying directly towards the viewers. This is one of Mackintosh's earliest uses of this strange bird, which was to become more stylised and to appear in many different forms, in several media in his oeuvre.' (Roger Billcliffe).

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

Leaf of Gold

In 1896 McNair held his first one-man show, an exhibition of pastels at the Gutekunst Gallery, London. Twenty-one works, including this, were displayed in distinctive dark-stained wood frames. McNair had clearly drawn inspiration from Whistler’s exhibition installations, even down to the typesetting of the catalogue. The entry for this work explained, ‘The Fairy is guarding the Leaf of Love from the Witch of Evil who has robbed the Tree of Life of all its other leaves.’

MacNair, James Herbert

Fairies

Mackintosh's style here is the closest he came to that of Margaret and Frances Macdonald, but his figures are always more substantial and the subject matter less whimsical than theirs.

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

Cabbages in an Orchard

From The Magazine, April 1894. The long text by Mackintosh which accompanies this watercolour in The Magazine (reproduced in full in Billcliffe's catalogue) suggests that he had already encountered public hostility to his work, possibly even from fellow students, on the grounds of incomprehensibility.

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

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