Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh ...

Hammer

£500

Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh - Memorial Exhibition Catalogue, 1933
McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, 4-27th May 1933, printed by Begg, Kennedy & Elder, Glasgow, paper covers, 8vo, foreword by Jessie R. Newbery

Note: Following the death of Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, wife of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, two Glasgow businessmen, James Meldrum and William Davidson, organised a Memorial Exhibition of the couple's work at the McLellan Galleries on Sauchiehall Street. Meldrum’s father, William, who had studied at evening classes alongside Mackintosh at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1880’s, owned a major collection of his work.

Provenance: The Rimmer family, the last residents of 78 Southpark Avenue before it was demolished. The Victorian terraced house was the home of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald from 1906 to 1914. Their comprehensively designed interior is now preserved in the Mackintosh House, part of the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery.

Frederick Rimmer (1914-1998), latterly Gardiner Professor of Music at the University, was University Organist from the 1950s to early 1960s, and rented the house for his wife, Joan, and three young children to be within easy reach.

In the words of one of Fred and Joan’s children “While we didn’t really appreciate at the time how significant Mackintosh was as we ran around playing and enjoying the big parties our parents threw in the enormous living room with its white-painted furniture, the house and its extraordinary interior left a lasting impression on us to this day.”

Note: Another copy can currently be seen on display as part of the Hunterian's Mackintosh House exhibition.