Faded flowers and Charles Rennie Mackintosh

click photo to enlarge
The reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) has never been higher than in recent years. It's difficult to go into a bookshop, a "craft" store, or a jewellers without coming across his name. Books, brooches, posters, mugs, picture frames - it seems that his Art Nouveau designs can adorn just about anything. And yet, this decorative work, as exemplified by the stencil patterns he used in the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow, is only a small part of his ouvre.

Mackintosh studied at the Glasgow School of Art, and in the 1890s he painted, did graphic work and metalwork that showed Art Nouveau influences he'd probably picked up from reading The Studio, a publication which began in 1893. However, his name really came to prominence when he won the competition to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art. His was a thoroughly modern conception that was influenced by Voysey and Scottish baronial architecture. It mixed the sharply rectilinear with the fluid lines of Art Nouveau, and deeply influenced continental, particularly Austrian, architects. Mackintosh went on to design other fine buildings and furniture. However, he was a man who alienated customers and fellow architects alike, and in 1913 he left his Glasgow practice and moved to Walberswick in Suffolk, where he concentrated on his paintings. During his time as an architect he had painted flowers, and in Suffolk he threw himself into this work, producing wonderful images of, principally, wild flowers in a combination of pencil and watercolour. He later went to live in Mediterranean France, and in the final years of his life painted landscapes and cut flowers in vases.

This latter work came to mind a few days ago when I was in a Leicestershire church. On the octagonal font cover, lit by strong light from a nearby window, was a vase of hydrangea flowers. The person who had placed them there had carefully selected a variety of coloured blooms - pink, blue, purple and white. But, the colours were fading fast as the flowers died. Their slow decline from bright, cheeriness to a pale memory of what had been, reminded me of the poignant beauty I once saw in a Mackintosh watercolour of 1905 that depicted faded roses. With that inspiration in mind, I took this photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 6.3mm (30mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tulips and painters

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I've always liked tulips. As a child I found their distinctive, pointed buds that opened into big, bright, goblet-shaped flowers holding large stamens and anthers, fascinating, and quite different from most of the other flowers that I saw.

As I got older I began to notice that many painters were enchanted by the flower too, some depicting it in its bold, strong upright form, and others in its more languid, drooping, "past its best" condition. The English painter, David Hockney (1937- ), frequently includes the flowers in interiors and portraits. A particular favourite of mine is his portrait of his parents that has a vase of tulips on a green cabinet. In a different style is his lithograph, "Pretty Tulips", where the flowers are drooping down towards the surface of a glass table. The Scottish architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), turned to painting in later life, and did some very individual watercolours of flowers, including tulips. His "Yellow Tulips" (c.1922-24) shows the curve of the flowers against an angular, modern-looking backdrop, with their leaves characteristically flopping over the edge of the blue vase that holds them. Seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish painters frequently included tulips in their "bouquet paintings", often giving them prominent positions, especially if they had petals marked attractively by a tulip virus. "Flowers in a Glass Vase" by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) exemplifies this style of painting.

Last year I took a few photographs of my tulips, both in situ, and in a vase. The other day, as the blooms started to show in the garden I thought I'd try for a shot that showed off the thrusting vitality of these flowers as they each seek their share of the space and light above them. A "letterbox crop" seemed to concentrate on and show off these characteristics better than the full-frame shot, so that is how I present the image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On