Macdonald/Mackintosh House

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On Tuesday, after dropping Kate off for her conference (at the James McCune Smith Learning Hub) I continued on up the hill to visit the Hunterian Art Gallery — a modern building by the University Library and across the street from the old University Gates. I'm most interested in the recreation of the Macdonald/Mackintosh house.

The gallery has a collection that shows the development of various styles from traditional landscapes through to impressionism, art nouveau (e.g., they have a Mucha print), art deco, craftsmen (think Franklin Lloyd Wright) and on to the modern art of today

Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh were a famous art nouveaux/art deco/craftsmen era couple who built a home here — he the artist and he the architect. The home is long gone replaced by these brutalism buildings housing the University Library and the Hunterian Gallery. The gallery has quite a collection of artworks but I'm most interested in the works by Scottish artist and designer . The Mackintosh House is a faithful recreation of the interior of the their home and every bit of the home is/was a unique piece of art.

They have a yellowed sketch of her work, 'The Birth and Death of the Winds' (with her sister Frances), is especially creepy but representative of her style — weirdly gaunt emaciated nudes. The sketch was made into a folding screen but the gallery just has the yellowed paper sketch. We bumped into more of her work at the Kelvingrove gallery. I have an photo album of her work I cribbed from a Facebook page (see my Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh collection but see also Wikipedia collection at Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh).

There are many things to see in Glasgow; I enjoyed her pieces and the recreation of their home at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. It's one of the joys of traveling with Kate to these KBS conferences.

See also Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery (on Facebook).