(smow) blog compact: Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Travel Sketches at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow

One of the most mundane, yet important, aspects of any designer or architect’s training is sketching existing buildings and products. Observing. Studying. Forming. Learning. Developing.

Hans J Wegner, for example, drew, drew and redrew the furniture in the Danish Design Museum Copenhagen, Louis I. Kahn spent his formative years sketching the ruins of European churches and cathedrals, while a young Le Corbusier regularly crossed the Swiss-Italian Border to undertake study tours of locations such as Pompeii, Venice or Pisa; tours which involved painting and sketching the buildings he witnessed.

The Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was also very aware of the importance of sketching and during numerous tours of Scotland, England and Europe established an enviable portfolio of watercolours and sketches of the buildings, monuments and examples of vernacular architecture which crossed his path.

Until March 2015 the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery is presenting an exhibition of  Mackintosh watercolours and sketches, works which in addition to providing an insight into the artist Mackintosh and his artistic style also promise to help demonstrate how travelling, and sketching what he saw, influenced and inspired Mackintosh’s work.

Travel famously broadening the mind. And extending the architects range and vocabulary.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Travel Sketches is an accompanying exhibition to “Mackintosh Architecture” the major exhibition of Mackintosh’s architectural drawings currently being shown in the Hunterian Art Gallery. But for us sounds like being the more entertaining exhibition.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Travel Sketches runs at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University Avenue, 82 Hillhead Street, Glasgow until March 1st 2015.

Mackintosh Architecture runs at the same venue until January 4th 2015

Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island, Northumberland, as sketched by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Photo courtesy of the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow)