The Hunterian

Charles Rennie Mackintosh fans will be able to view six of his rare sketchbooks online for the first time this month. The fragile books are part of the world class collection at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, and have been conserved, photographed and catalogued with the support of a grant from Museums Galleries Scotland. They can be viewed at: http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/Mackintosh/sketchbooks 

Almost 300 pages of drawings from the books are available to view and come from an early student book of building construction details, four travel sketchbooks and a late notebook covering Mackintosh’s final years as a practising architect. The earliest dated drawing is from 1895 and the latest from 1920.
 
The travel sketchbooks document Mackintosh’s trips through Scotland – to Ayrshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire, and England, to Devon, East Anglia, Gloucestershire, Kent, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Sussex. Mackintosh sought out village churches, vernacular domestic buildings and architectural details ranging from the profile of gravestones to the patterns of 15th-century window leading. Interspersed with these are exquisite botanical drawings.

The late notebook records site visits, refurbishments at The Hill House, and other later architectural projects in Scotland. Intriguingly there are also proposals for jobs, so far unidentified, in Chelsea, London.

Professor Pamela Robertson, Senior Curator at The Hunterian, said:

‘These delicate drawings reveal Mackintosh’s interests and illustrate his masterful draughtsmanship. It is wonderful that they are now freely available for all to enjoy.’

Dr George Rawson, who undertook the research and followed in Mackintosh’s footsteps, tracking down and photographing locations in England, commented:

‘The project has enabled us to identify many of the subjects that Mackintosh drew. The site allows visitors to compare, for the first time, photographs of the sites with his drawings.’

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For further information contact:
Professor Pamela Robertson, Senior Curator
Email: Pamela.Robertson@glasgow.ac.uk  Telephone: 0141 330 4547

For images contact:
Harriet Gaston, Communications Manager
Email: Harriet.Gaston@glasgow.ac.uk Telephone: 0141 330 3310

Notes to Editors

1. The Hunterian houses the pre-eminent collection of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work, including the Glasgow artist, designer and architect’s Estate of over 800 drawings, designs and watercolours and The Mackintosh House, the reassembled interiors from his Glasgow home.

Founded in 1807, The Hunterian is Scotland’s oldest public museum. Built on William Hunter’s founding bequest, the collections include scientific instruments used by James Watt and Joseph Lister; outstanding Roman artefacts from the Antonine Wall; major natural sciences holdings; one of the world’s greatest numismatic collections; impressive ethnographic objects from the Pacific Ocean and a major art collection.

The Hunterian is also home to the world’s largest permanent display of the work of James McNeill Whistler.

There are four Hunterian venues on the University of Glasgow campus - the Hunterian Museum, Hunterian Art Gallery, home to The Mackintosh House, the Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum.

2. Museums Galleries Scotland provided a grant of £4,222 as match funding under its Small Grants Scheme for the conservation, digitisation, and cataloguing of the sketchbooks.

3. The project was led by Pamela Robertson, Senior Curator and Professor of Mackintosh Studies, The Hunterian. The books were conserved by Book and Archive Conservation Services, Edinburgh, and catalogued by Dr George Rawson. The photography was undertaken by the University of Glasgow’s Photographic Department. Additional work was provided by Claire Lowney, History of Art, University of Glasgow.

4. Mackintosh sketchbooks are also held by the National Library of Ireland (3); The Glasgow School of Art (2); and a private collection (1).

The Hunterian
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ

Open Tuesday - Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm and Sunday 11.00am - 4.00pm
Closed Mondays

First published: 29 February 2012