CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (SCOTTISH 1868-1928) ‡
‘TACSONIA’
£30,000
Auction: 7 September 2012 at 15:00 BST
Description
signed with initials CRM and MMM, inscribed and dated lower centre left CINTRA JUNE 1908, pencil and watercolour
Dimensions
24.5 x 19cm (9 3/4 x 7 1/2in)
Footnote
Provenance:
R.W.B Morris, executor of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh's estate, 1933
Sotheby's Belgravia, 7 November 1978, lot 162
Piccadilly Gallery, London
Galleria Galatea, Milan
Sotheby's, Glasgow 'Scottish Paintings', 11th December 1996, Lot 281
Exhibited:
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum; London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish Arts Council Exhibition, 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Architecture, Design and Painting', 17th August - 8th Sepatember and 30th October - 29th December 1968, no. 293
Literature:
Billcliffe, Roger 'Mackintosh Watercolours', London 1978, p. 78, Catalogue 86
Note:
The Mackintoshes visited Cintra in Portugal in 1908, presumably on holiday. This is one of the most elegant compositions of Mackintosh's flower studies, combining pencil drawings of the plant's leaves and a dissection of its seed pod, overlaid with a watercolour depiction of the flower in various stages of its life. This layering of different views and elements within a composition had been used regularly in his pencil architectural sketches from about 1900 onwards and can be seen in other drawings of Cintra buildings made at this time.