4 April 2024
John Mackie
Charles Rennie Mackintosh is today celebrated as a leading pioneer of modernism and his 1915 enigmatic pencil and watercolour sketch ‘Grass Hyacinthe’, dates from a period of great change and turbulence for the artist.
We are delighted to present this fine example from Mackintosh's series of Walberswick watercolour studies to auction in our 17 & 18 April DESIGN Since 1860 auction.
In June 1914, he and his wife Margaret Macdonald travelled from Glasgow to the Suffolk coastal town of Walberswick, economic recession having rendered Mackintosh’s home city increasingly hostile to his architectural business. The firm of which he was a partner had completed the celebrated Glasgow School of Art in 1909, but by the mid 1910’s was struggling to find work. Having split from the firm, Mackintosh journeyed to East Anglia for a countryside escape. ‘Grass Hyacinthe’ is one of around thirty to forty similar works executed during his stay. It has been suggested that the series was commissioned by a German publisher, the progress of the prospective publication halted by the advent of World War I.
Like many coastal towns in Britain, Walberswick became an artists’ retreat during the summer months, providing solace and inspiration to creatives including Philip Wilson Steer, E. A. Walton and Mary Newbery. Mary Newbery, was the daughter of Frances Newbery, headmaster at the Glasgow School of Art and friend of Mackintosh. It is thought that the Newberys encouraged Mackintosh to paint to help him come to terms with his disappointment and to heal his soul.
Pencil and paper sketches were not a novel form to Mackintosh, and in many ways represented a return to his former oeuvre. From his student days in the 1880s, he used sketches to process design ideas. His early drawings were more technical and regularly harnessed by the young artist as a means of experimenting with stylised plant forms to create patterns. Furthermore, nature-based subjects were familiar to the artist, having sketched the flora of his surroundings whilst on holidays in Britain and beyond from 1901. The Walberswick sketches, however, represent a shift in artistic style. Gone are the architectural explorations, replaced instead with a marriage of the technical botanical drawing and free, creative expression of the natural world.
‘Grass Hyacinthe’ bears not only the monogram signature of Charles but also that of his wife Margaret, confirming her presence at the time of painting. The misspelled plant name is a common feature in his work, leading to speculation that he was dyslexic.
The stay at Walberswick lasted fourteen months, its end only prompted by Charles’ arrest on suspicion of being a German spy, such was his tendency to study the East Anglian coastal landscape which aroused the suspicions of the local community. Artistically however it provided the artist with an opportunity to sharpen the clarity of his artistic vision, with many followers believing the Walberswick sketches to be amongst his finest works.
