Charles Rennie Mackintosh fans will be able to view six of his rare sketchbooks online for the first time this month. The fragile books are part of the world class collection at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, and have been conserved, photographed and catalogued with the support of a grant from Museums Galleries Scotland. 

Almost 300 pages of drawings from the books are available to view and come from an early student book of building construction details, four travel sketchbooks and a late notebook covering Mackintosh’s final years as a practising architect. The earliest dated drawing is from 1895 and the latest from 1920.
 
The travel sketchbooks document Mackintosh’s trips through Scotland – to Ayrshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire, and England, to Devon, East Anglia, Gloucestershire, Kent, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Sussex. Mackintosh sought out village churches, vernacular domestic buildings and architectural details ranging from the profile of gravestones to the patterns of 15th-century window leading. Interspersed with these are exquisite botanical drawings.

The late notebook records site visits, refurbishments at The Hill House, and other later architectural projects in Scotland. Intriguingly there are also proposals for jobs, so far unidentified, in Chelsea, London.

Professor Pamela Robertson, Senior Curator at The Hunterian, said:

‘These delicate drawings reveal Mackintosh’s interests and illustrate his masterful draughtsmanship. It is wonderful that they are now freely available for all to enjoy.’

Dr George Rawson, who undertook the research and followed in Mackintosh’s footsteps, tracking down and photographing locations in England, commented:

‘The project has enabled us to identify many of the subjects that Mackintosh drew. The site allows visitors to compare, for the first time, photographs of the sites with his drawings.’

First published: 29 February 2012

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