Charles Rennie Mackintosh

MACKINTOSH'S TOUR OF ITALY, 1891 In 1890 Mackintosh became the second winner of the Alexander Thomson Memorial Travelling Studentship. The competition had been established in 1883 by Thomson's Trustees and was open to prospective British architects, aged between eighteen and twenty-five and of 'approved moral character'. Entries had to reflect Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's interest in 'Ancient Classic Architecture as practised prior to the commencement of the Third Century of the Christian Era'. Mackintosh's winning entry in 1890 was a design for a public hall, a design which combined fashionable Beaux Arts planning with recognisable Greek details which would have appealed to Thomson and were intended to appeal to his Trustees. The prize was 0, to fund a three month sketching tour, the results of which, along with a written memoir, and to be submitted to the Thomson Trustees on completion. Mackintosh chose to go to Italy and set out from Glasgow for London on 21 March 1891. A diary and two sketchbooks (one at Glasgow School of Art, the other, the collection of Thomas Howarth, being sold here) give a fairly full account of Mackintosh's progress through and reactions to Italian architecture and painting. On his return to Glasgow, Mackintosh prepared an account of his tour for the Thomson Trustees and an illustrated lecture for the Glasgow Architectural Association. The drawings vary from technical sketches, full of measurements and architectural detail to be assimilated into Mackintosh's competition and office projects in Glasgow, to fully-worked watercolours, where the pictorial element of a building or vista is recognised as much as its architectural importance. In the sketchbooks which he filled in Italy Mackintosh established the framework of his future practice as a draughtsman, able to change seamlessly from page to page from an analytical hand to an artistic one. His intuitive skill is apparent in all these drawings; he gave to each of them the same care as in his larger and more formal perspectives. Over the coming decade he was to develop this facility and combine his fluid line with an unerring eye and appreciation of form and pattern. They are the first indication of Mackintosh's enthusiastic approach to architecture in all form and of his sensitive response to colour, light and shadow. A full account of Mackintosh's reactions to Italy, a transcription of his diary, lecture and Memoir to the Thomson Trustees, along with details of correspondence between the Trustees and Mackintosh, are given by Pamela Robertson, in 'Mackintosh and Italy', in Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Architectural Papers, (edited by Robertson, Wendlebury, 1990); also 'The Internal Reality of Building' by Thomas Howarth in Mackintosh and his Contemporaries. p.39 et. seq.

Details

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Pompeii, A Sheet of Studies including Pedestal, Gable End, Trough, Corinthian Capital and Statue
signed with monogram and dated 'APRIL 7th./1891' and inscribed 'SKETCHES FROM POMPEI (sic)' and 'PEDESTAL.'; pencil
271 x 188mm.

Exhibited

Toronto, 1978, no.2

Lot Essay

Mackintosh arrived in Naples from England on 5 April 1891. The following day he sought permission from the British Consul to sketch at Pompeii, which he visited on Tuesday 7 April. He made sketches in the museum and in the Temple of Mercury.

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