By Mark McSherry

A number of works by the late Scottish artist, designer and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh sold for a total of more than £373,000 at this week’s “Design Since 1860” auction held by Lyon & Turnbull.

“Highlights of the sale included a group of watercolours, furniture and works of art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, including the wonderful French period watercolour ‘Bouleternère’ which sold for £150,200 inc fees and a group of silver cutlery designed for Fra and Jessie Newbery which sold for a remarkable £175,200 inc fees,” said Lyon & Turnbull.

“France marked the first time in Mackintosh’s life where there were no distractions from or demands away from his painting practice,” said the auction house.

“Perhaps inevitably for an architect, Mackintosh was drawn to the local townscapes of the area. He was not attracted to grandeur however, rather the organic occurrence of more vernacular groups of dwelling – like the town of Bouleternère, somewhat vertiginously arranged on a sloping hill, culminating in a pinnacle topped with small church of rudimentary form.

“As Margaret remarked in a letter to Jessie Newbery in 1925, ‘the buildings here (in this region of France) are a perpetual joy to us’.

“These views were not directly topographical, instead often culminations of various viewpoints, arranged ‘just-so’ for the purposes of the paintings’ design.

“Like many of the French works, Mackintosh employs pale tones demarked by sparer uses of colour in a high key that frequently depart from realism; here in the blue used to delineate the shadows cast by the overhang of the red tiled rooves.

“In addition, the French watercolours utilise a very foreshortened pictorial plane, a device that again enhances the sense of pattern and design that so distinctly defines his work across all the media and genres he turned his hand to.

“These artistic choices combine to produce works of great sophistication.

“The paintings produced in France – between 10-15 a year – are considered very important, being a period of ‘remarkable evolution in his artistic practice’, as his biographer Roger Billcliffe describes it.

“Their importance also lies in the chronology of Mackintosh’s output.

“As Billcliffe continues, ‘…these works underscore his innovative approach to landscape painting and suggest a promising future as a painter, tragically curtailed by his untimely death from cancer in 1928′.”