Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Art of the Four

The Glasgow Style is the name given to the work of a group of young designers and architects working in Glasgow from 1890–1914. At its centre were four young friends who had trained at Glasgow School of Art; two architects and two artists – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert MacNair, Margaret Macdonald and Frances Macdonald – who were simply known by their friends and contemporaries as ‘The Four’. Their work was a personal vision in the new international style of the 1890s, Art Nouveau, and is perhaps best known for Mackintosh’s architecture and furniture. But at the root of this new style was a graphic language which all four shared. Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Art of The Four presents the most coherent story to date of this important group, concentrating on the entirety of their artistic imagery and output, far beyond the best known work of the 1890s, and charting the constantly changing relationships between the artists and their work.