Display | Charles Rennie Mackintosh in France

1 Nov 2024-9 Feb 2025

Overview

In his French watercolours, Mackintosh explores the relationship between buildings and their environment. With their brilliant colours and powerful design, these works show his ability to read patterns in landscape and to find structure in the natural world.

In 1923 Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864–1933), moved to the south of France. They stayed initially in the mountain spa town of Amélie-les-Bains in the Pyrenees, later moving to Port-Vendres on the Roussillon coast. Over the next four years Mackintosh painted around 40 watercolours, depicting the mountains, farms, hill villages, harbours and plants of the region.

Although best known as an architect, Mackintosh drew and painted throughout his career. Sketching buildings and nature provided inspiration for his design work and he also painted botanical watercolours. In the heat and light of France, he concentrated entirely on landscape painting for the first time. He worked outdoors and at a methodical pace, constantly seeking to improve. He wrote that ‘I find that each of my drawings has something in them but none of them have everything. This must be remedied’.