Architect Drawings : A Selection of Sketches by World Famous Architects Through History

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie (1868–1928)
Sketch of doors for various palaces in Florence, (Contents: Florence, sketch u.l. shows door at the
Palazzo della Zecca, Piazzale degli Uffizi, Florence. Sketch u.r. shows door of the Palazzo di Bianca
Cappello, Via Maggio, Florence. Sketch l.l. shows the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, Florence. Sketch
l.r. shows trabeated forms of classical architecture), 1891, National Library of Ireland, PD 2009 TX
64, 17.4 12.6cm, Pencil
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Although influenced by Art Nouveau,
Arts and Crafts, and the Vienna Secession movements, his architecture was imbued with contextual
aspects of Scottish vernacular tradition. Beginning his career as an apprentice to John Hutchison,
Mackintosh easily moved between graphic design, interiors, and building construction throughout his
life. While attending the Glasgow School of Art he won numerous honors and was a member of the
group The Four, with Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Herbert MacNair. He joined the architectural
firm of Honeyman and Keppie in 1889, and in 1891 he received an award to travel to Italy – his
only travel outside the British Isles. He approached this visit with the same observational and analytical
gravity as his sketching trips through Scotland (Grogan, 2002).
Mackintosh acquired the competition commission for the Glasgow School of Art for Honeyman
and Keppie in 1897, his most celebrated project. With a small budget, on an awkward, sloping site, he
designed a masonry exterior with asymmetrical façades. The relatively plain elevations reveal the simple
massing, recognized by some as the first designed in the modern style (Cooper, 1978). A few of his
other notable buildings include Hill House and the Cranston Tea Houses in Glasgow.
This illustration (Figure 5.4) is a page from one of Mackintosh’s Italian sketchbooks. As a stipulation
of the Thomson Traveling Studentship, Mackintosh was required to study classical architecture,
record his findings, and present a lecture to the Glasgow School of Art upon his return.
Although he rendered watercolors and completed larger drawings, the sketchbook is largely a collection
of his architectural thoughts. The page displays several buildings in Florence, as if he was
comparing their likenesses or differences. Very few of these sketches have been drawn in perspective;
instead, he sketched parts of the building as if he was attempting to understand their nature.
Analysis consists of study often involving the separation of a whole into its component parts for
examination. Analysis also suggests drawing conclusions through manipulating or regrouping pertinent
material and locating meaning in their relationships (OED, 1971).
Each sketch remains unfinished, as if Mackintosh was viewing the parts to comprehend the whole;
or, once he understood their structure he could avoid repeating the details. Author of a collection of
his sketches, Elaine Grogan explains that the Victorian sketchbook was used to understand nature,
such as with a scientist’s recordings (2002). Similarly, the sketchbook was a memory device for
Mackintosh to record his thoughts, but it also provided an avenue for observation and analysis. He
used this sketchbook to study how decoration was applied to structure.
Typical of Mackintosh’s pencil technique, this sketch is executed with minimal lines. He used a
slow hand with firm and definitive marks, accentuated by hesitation and emphasizing the line’s end.
Numerous slow, wavy lines show his concentration and desire to think as he was drawing. Much like
his graphic work for paintings and posters, Mackintosh’s single line accentuates edges and gives the
image a flat quality reminiscent of Japanese paintings and Ukioye prints (popular at the time). The
placement of objects in a field creates a solid/void relationship, further defining the sketch as a
graphic statement.
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