Portal:Architecture/Selected article/2007-24

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Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – December 10, 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, and watercolourist who was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau in Scotland.

Born in Glasgow, and suffering from a bad foot and eye problems, he was free to discover and draw sketches of a great deal of the Scottish countryside as a child. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to an architect named John Hutchison, where he worked from 1884 until 1889. Also during that time he became a draughtsman with Honeyman and Keppie, a new architectural practice, eventually becoming a partner in 1901. All along he attended evening classes in art at the Glasgow School of Art. It was at these classes that he first met Margaret MacDonald (whom he later married), her sister Frances MacDonald, and Herbert MacNair who was also a fellow apprentice with Mackintosh at Honeyman and Keppie. The group of artists, known as "The Four," exhibited in Glasgow, London and Vienna, and these exhibitions helped establish Mackintosh's reputation. The so-called "Glasgow" style was exhibited in Europe and influenced the Viennese Art Nouveau movement known as Sezessionstil (in English, The Secession) around 1900.