Page 49 - sarah-simblet_sketch-book-for-the-artist

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CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH BOTANICAL STUDIES

Scottish architect designer painter; and founder
o f t h e G l a s g o w S c h o o l o f A r t M a c k i n t o s h ' s flair
had an enormous influence on the avant-garde
in Germany and Austria, and he inspired,
a m o n g 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.

Rose
1894
103/4 x 83/4 in ( 2 7 5 x 2 2 1 m m )
CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH

STELLA ROSS-CRAIG A trained botanical artist Ross-Craig
joined the staff at the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, London in 1929. H e r work on British flora. As many as
Drawings of British Plants, p u b l i s h e d 3,000
1 9 4 8 - 7 3 in 31 parts, is recognized Kew of her drawings are kept at
as tne m o s t c o m p l e t e a n d i m p o r t a n t to
archive Gardens. She also contributed
accessible today via the Internet
Curtis's Botanical Magazine, an

of of thousands of drawings,

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
x 81/4 in ( 3 2 5 x 2 1 0 m m )

STELLA ROSS-CRAIG