Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928), the Glasgow-
born architect and designer was the leading British
exponent of Art Nouveau. He is best known for his
architecture and interior and furniture design but he
made contributions also in the fields of metalwork and
graphics, as well as, towards the end of his career,
painting. His reputation during his lifetime was higher
abroad, particularly in Austria and Germany, than it was
at home and very few architectural works by him were
actually built. Among these are the Glasgow School of
Art, 1896–1910, and Hill House, Helensburgh, 1902–3,
each influential for its interior, as well as exterior, treat-
ment. Mackintosh’s work may be seen as part of a
general break from Classicism towards a modernism
drawing on vernacularism, natural forms, and the
inspiration of Japanese art and design.
Overview
Harold Osborne in The Oxford Companion to Art, 1970,
offers a useful summary of the life and work of the Glasgow-
born architect, craftsman and designer, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh:
...Scottish architect and designer, leader of the Glasgow
School of Art Nouveau, and precursor of several of the
more advanced trends in 20th-c. architecture. His furni-
ture design and interior decoration, often done in associ-
ation with his wife, Margaret Macdonald (1865–1933),
showed the characteristic Mannerist calligraphic quality
of art nouveau but avoided the exaggerated floral orna-
ment often associated with that style. As an architect he
opposed himself vigorously to the current eclectic acad-
emicism and 'period revival' fashion, while he became a
pioneer in the new conception of the role of function in
architectural design1 and his simple geometrical manipu-
lation of space looked forward to the purist work of
[Adolf] Loos, [Peter] Behrens, and [Hans] Poelzig.
His domestic architecture evolved in a number of
houses built near Glasgow from c.1899 to 1910. While in
certain external details they have affinities with the
Scottish 17th-c. architecture, their restrained and dynam-
ic structure looks forward to the Dutch Stijl. Outstanding
among these are Windyhill, Kilmalcolm (1899–1901),
and Hill House, Helensburgh (1902–3). His fame rests to
1 That beauty results from or is identical with functional efficiency is
a theory that has been advanced at least as far back as Classical
times. In 1901 the American architect Louis Sullivan coined the
phrase form follows function. This became a guiding principle in
modern architecture and design.
a large extent on his Glasgow School of Art (1897–9)
and its library block and other extensions (1907–9).
Vigorously modelled, boldly geometrical, with emphasis
on the straight line, they had little ornament, but the
twisted iron window-balconies had a quality of energy
and directness which made a great impression on the
Continent. His interior decoration was perhaps most
spectacularly expressed in the four Glasgow ['Willow']
tea-rooms designed with all their furniture and equipment
for Miss Kate Cranston (the first of them in collaboration
with George Walton, 1867–1933) during the period c.
1897–1912. In a competition for the design of a connois-
seur's house organized by the Zeitschrift für Innende-
koration of Darmstadt in 1901 he was awarded second
prize; and in 1902 he laid out the Scottish section of the
Turin exhibition.
Mackintosh's influence on the avant-garde abroad
was very great, especially in Germany and Austria, so
much so that the advanced style of the early 20th c. was
sometimes known as 'Mackintoshismus'. He was the first
British architect to acquire an international reputation
since the 18th c. [Josef] Hoffman and [Joseph Maria]
Olbrich owed much to him. In 1900 he exhibited with the
Vienna Sezession and later Fritz Wäarndorfer, one of the
founders of the Wiener Werkstätte, took some of its
members to study his buildings in Glasgow. His work
was exhibited in Budapest, Munich, Dresden, Venice,
and Moscow, arousing interest and excitement every-
where.
Fig. 1 Charles Rennie Mackintos h, high-backed chair for the
luncheon room of Miss Cranston’s Argyle Street tearooms, 1897.
Reproduced from Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Design of the 20th
Century, Taschen, 1999, ISBN 3-8228-7039, p. 435.
In 1914 he settled in London. Thereafter, apart from a
house in Northampton, none of his major architectural
projects reached the stage of execution, though he did
complete some work as a designer of fabrics, book
covers, and furniture. In 1923 he retired to Port Vendres
[in the south of France], where he devoted himself to
water-colour painting.2
Craft and interior design
In 1896, Mackintosh along with his wife-to-be Margaret
(they married in 1900), her sister Frances Macdonald, and
Herbert McNair (the 'Glasgow Four' as they became
known), exhibited graphics, repoussé metal plaques,
mirrors, clocks, cupboards and cabinets at the London Arts
and Crafts Exhibition Society show. The work attracted
considerable attention. Gleeson White, editor of The Studio,
praised it in an article in the magazine in 1897. Whilst
positive and supportive, White also rather tellingly referred
to the four as the 'Spook School' and their work as an
expression of a 'quasi-malignant paganism'. Something of
this fin-de-siècle quality comes across in E. B. Kalas’s 1905
account of the Mackintoshs' own flat. It incidentally testifies
also to the growing international influence exerted by
2 Harold Osborne (editor), The Oxford Companion to Art, 1970,
ISBN 0-19-866107-x, pp. 678-9.
Related Study Notes
20400
Architecture and technical
innovation in the machine
age
20420
Art Nouveau
20610
Shaker craft and design
20631
William Morris and the Arts
and Crafts Movement
20711
Art Deco
In the text, a Z symbol refers
to these Study Notes
20423
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER
by
Dr John W Nixon
1/4 20423u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART
