Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a Scottish architect, designer and painter, born in Glasgow. He was apprenticed to the architect John Hutchison in 1884 while taking evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art, joined the firm of Honeyman and Keppie in 1889 and became a partner in 1901. With the artist Margaret Macdonald, whom he married in 1900, her sister Frances and Herbert MacNair, he formed "The Four," whose work was shown at the Vienna Secession exhibition in 1900.

His largest building is the Glasgow School of Art, built in two phases from 1897 to 1899 and 1907 to 1909. Its north front has very large studio windows, and the later west wing held a library of dark timber posts and beams. A fire in May 2014 destroyed the library, and a second fire in June 2018 gutted the building, which is being reinstated. Mackintosh designed furniture, light fittings and interiors with his buildings, often with Margaret Macdonald.

The Hill House in Helensburgh (1902-1904), built for the publisher Walter Blackie, has a white-walled bedroom with a high-backed ladder chair he designed for it. In Glasgow he also designed the Willow Tearooms (1903) for Kate Cranston and Scotland Street School (1903-1906). His practice declined after 1913, and from 1923 to 1927 he lived at Port-Vendres in France, painting watercolors. He died in London in 1928.