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Glasgow style With digital objects
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Leaf of Gold

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

The Tree of Personal Effort

The Tree of Personal Effort

From The Magazine, Spring 1896. Inscribed: The Tree of Personal Effort, The Sun of Indifference, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, January 1895.' The exact meaning of the symbolism of this work, and its companion, 'The Tree of Influence' has eluded all commentators on Mackintosh's early water-colours. The obvious source of the symbolism is nature, and Mackintosh here reaches his most extreme distortion of organic forms.' (Roger Billcliffe).

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

The Downs, Worth Matravers

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

Fairies

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

The Village, Worth Matravers

The Village, Worth Matravers

In July Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald spent a holiday in Dorset re-visiting many of the place he had visited in 1895. 'In 'The Village' and 'The Downs' Mackintosh makes his first conscious moves towards his mature style of the Port Vendres period. He is obviously concerned with the pattern of the landscape, picking out features like the stepped hillside, the stone walls, paths and roofs of village houses. These ordinary motifs are given an eerie emphasis by being painted in an equally detailed manner whether they are in the foreground of the the distance... it was probably at this time... that he decided to concentrate more and more on painting. By 1923 he had decided to forsake architecture and design and devote the rest of his life to producing watercolours.' (Roger Billcliffe).

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie

Cabbages in an Orchard

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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