Charles Rennie Mackintosh in France

I've recently discovered C.R. Mackintosh's landscape watercolours that he painted during the last years of his life in France. These hadn't been a critical success when they were exhibited in the 192O's and were not exhibited as a group until 2005 when this book was first published. I have always been intrigued by and empathised with how artists often took to landscape for pleasure -Sargent and Klimt are other notable examples - and have enjoyed studying them.Like many others I suspect I had been rather swamped with the ubiquity of his designs on the plethora of mugs, jewellery, ,knitwear and anything else one can imagine and, pleasant though they are, had tended to ignore him. It took an excellent documentary on his life and work to acquaint me with his watercolours and awken my interest. I first bought Roger Billcliffe's old but excellent book on C.R.M 's watercolours which whetted my appetite and then got this one.I am very glad I did. This one has large, very well-reproduced colour illustrations of all the paintings he made in France. They also have smaller monochrome photos of the places he painted on the facing pages along with information and relevant extracts from correspondence. As the plates are pin-sharp and shown at about half-size of the originals they are full of information and the authors have carefully worked out how much C.R.M used observation and invention in each work . However I found there was far less sense of the painter as a person or details of his working methods than were contained in Roger Billcliffe's less well illustrated book. I was delighted with this book though and would recommend it for any watercolourist or art buff interested in the less well known aspect of this polymath's work.

This book brings together a substantial number of reproductions of the watercolours produced by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the last few years of his life. Much better known as an architect, Mackintosh was, in fact, a hugely talented painter. He's known a little for his lovely watercolours of flowers, but these works, landscapes produced in the South of France, are highly accomplished major works in their own right. The accompanying texts are very informative. Brilliant book!

Great book, brilliant artist and lots of little known work!

If you like Mackintosh this book won’t disappoint. Good price too.

No problems and very interesting book..