CRM at the Dean
CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH FRANCE — a survey of CRM's work in the twenties, having left the UK for the South of France to make a go at watercolours. Good typography!

In the first room there's a case containing exquisite notebooks (B6 short edge binding) opened to pencil drawings of architecture. Grand pictures of castles and churches cover two pages in portrait format, and he has a great balance between detail and impression, light and shadow. The subject lies across both pages, lines demarcing the edges are confident and there's a small wiggle in their execution which softens the edge and stops it getting boring. Features in the church — the roundel for example — are not completely drawn, and there's enough to get an idea of the whole from about 30° of detail. Elsewhere, he draws details to the side of the main picture. For the large expanse of the building there's realistic rendering and artifice together that keeps the interest and shows the essence of the subject (a few rectangles to suggest bricks, some with dark jointing, some in reverse with light jointing; simple geometric repetitions to suggest the eaves) but mostly the walls are left natural and the slight grain and colour of the paper is used. Other pictures have a few bricks at the edge drawn in; has the render fallen off?

I like the attention to rocks under e.g Stirling Castle. It looks like he's drawn the outlines first with small, quick oscillations and then filled in the remaining rock with longer hatch marks. Shadows under bridges and in windows are drawn with multiple parallel lines. Windows are small, square and dark; perhaps with a softer pencil. And how does he stop the pencil rubbing over to the opposing page? fixer?

In a couple of drawings, there's a very occasional touch of watercolour — flowers, a rail — and this is evident in the the later paintings. Two pictures from rural Dorset in 1920 have a restricted grey-green palette depicting houses on a hillside and an agricutural scene, and there's a few contrasting colours in chimney pots, or water-filled ditches. Pictures in the South of France continue in this theme: green for vegetation; slate or terracotta or other building material; blue for public water. In some the amount of accent colour is miniscule, but strategic: in the mountains there's a dab of red in the absolute centre of the canvass and a dab of mustard on the centre line towards the top of the picture.

Ships c.1922 is interesting: mainly parallel lines with occasional re-routings and perpendicular lines to suggest the roiling sea; a vivid blue watercolour over those lines. I thought it was reminiscent of a series of Klee drawings, but I now see that things like Rock-cut Temple, 1925, and View of a Mountain Sanctuary, 1926, are actually later. Could also be exploring the cubist perspectives; crystsallography; many things.

Bizarre echoes of Glasgow and Cumbernauld in some paintings, but with more sunlight.

A nice day out with hfnuala, yonmei and surliminal