Sketch Book for the Artist

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH

Scottish architect designer painter; and founder

of the Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh's flair

had an enormous influence on the avant-garde

in Germany and Austria, and he inspired,

among others, Gustav Klimt In his retirement

Mackintosh made numerous inventive pencil

and watercolor drawings of plants.

Lines and shadows This lush, sensual pencil drawing is

found among Mackintosh's later works. Closer to fiction

than reality, it is small and discreet, and it shows how

design, imagination, and observation can come together

in one image. Pencil lines cling to, and follow perfectly,

the nuance and contour of every shadow.

BOTANICAL

STUDIES

Rose

1894

103 / 4 x 83 / 4 in (275 x221 mm)

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH

STELLA ROSS-CRAIG

A trained botanical artist Ross-Craig

joined the staff at the Royal Botanic

Gardens, Kew, London in 1929. Her

Drawings of British Plants, published

1948-73 in 31 parts, is recognized

as tne most complete and important

work on British flora. As many as

3,000 of her drawings are kept at

Kew Gardens. She also contributed

to Curtis's Botanical Magazine, an

archive of of thousands of drawings,

accessible today via the Internet

Swift lines The drawing was planned

in pencil and then overworked with a

lithographic pen. Ross-Craig said of her work

"Plants that wither rapidly present a very

difficult problem to which there is only one

answer—speed; and speed depends upon

the immediate perception of the essential

characteristics of the plant... and perfect

coordination of hand and eye." This line

drawing is one of 1,286 studies for her

book Drawings of British Plants.

Line Drawing of
Cypripedium calceolus L
c. 1970
123 / 4 x 81 / 4 in (325 x210 mm)
STELLA ROSS-CRAIG