Charles Rennie Mackintosh ('Mr. Mac'): Background information when reading Mr. Mac and Me

Charles Rennie Mackintosh ("Mr. Mac")

This article relates to Mr. Mac and Me

Mackintosh (1868–1928), one of the central characters in Esther Freud's Mr. Mac and Me, was one of 11 children born to a police superintendent and his wife in Glasgow, Scotland. Early on he showed promise as an architect, winning the 1890 Alexander Thomson Traveling Studentship, which funded his travel around Europe to study classic architecture. He joined the Honeyman & Keppie architectural practice and began his first project, designing the Glasgow Herald Building (now The Lighthouse, Scotland's Center for Architecture, Design and the City). Although he made partner in 1904, he left to set up his own practice in 1913.

In 1892 Mackintosh met his future wife, Margaret, during evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. She, too, was an artist, known for her embroidered or gesso (a glue-coating layer underneath paint) panels. Together the Mackintoshes – known, along with Margaret's sister Frances and Herbert MacNair, as "The Glasgow Four" – contributed to the development of the Glasgow Style of the 1890s. In addition, Charles Rennie Mackintosh falls into the Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau schools. He was also influenced by Japonisme, in vogue for the simplicity of Oriental design.

Mackintosh's style employed an innovative blend of angularity and softness. The Mackintosh rose is a particularly good example of how he combined straight lines and hard corners with gently curved shapes. He also did watercolor paintings (this is mostly what Tommy observes in Mr. Mac and Me) and designed interior decorations and furniture. The Mackintosh floral designs are still remarkably popular (see, for instance, the Just Mackintosh online store).

Some of the most famous Mackintosh-designed buildings in Glasgow are: the Glasgow School of Art, Renfrew Street; Queen's Cross Church (current headquarters of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society); the Royal Highland Fusiliers Regimental Museum; and the former Daily Record offices. A number of his designs were never built, including another museum, concert halls, a railway station, and a cathedral.

The historical intersection at the heart of Mr. Mac and Me is based on a true story. During World War I, the Mackintoshes temporarily relocated to Walberswick, Suffolk, the village where author Esther Freud has a house. At the time of the novel Mackintosh had received hardly any recognition for his work, despite designing the Glasgow School of Art. Instead he painted flowers, like the fritillaries on the novel's cover, for small sums here and there. While he lived in Suffolk Mackintosh was indeed assumed by some to be a German spy.

Mackintosh died of throat cancer in 1928 and is buried in London. When fire destroyed the library of the Glasgow School of Art in May 2014 and caused some damage to the building itself, it was a reminder to many architectural critics of just what a gem that Mackintosh design is. Indeed, in a nationwide poll administered by the Royal Institute of British Architects, it was named the best building of the past 175 years.

Picture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh from Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society
Picture of Mackintosh Rose from stained glass window, Hill House, Glasgow
Picture of Southern Port by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Picture of Glasgow School of Art from Charles Rennie Mackintosh Buildings

Filed under Music and the Arts

This "beyond the book article" relates to Mr. Mac and Me. It originally ran in February 2015 and has been updated for the October 2015 paperback edition. Go to magazine.