![Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Petunias [1916]](http://farm1.staticflickr.com/541/20093310739_4e26ac74df_o.jpg)
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Glasgow, June 7, 1868 - London, December 10, 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. He was a designer in the post impressionist movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. Later in life, disillusioned with architecture, Mackintosh worked largely as a watercolourist, painting numerous landscapes and flower studies (often in collaboration with his wife Margaret, with whose style Mackintosh's own gradually converged). They moved to the Suffolk village of Walberswick in 1914. There Mackintosh was accused of being a German spy and briefly arrested in 1915.
By 1923, the Mackintoshes had moved to Port-Vendres, a Mediterranean coastal town in southern France with a warm climate that was a comparably cheaper location in which to live. Many of his paintings depict Port Vendres, a small port near the Spanish border, and the nearby landscapes. The couple remained in France for two years, before being forced to return to London in 1927 due to illness. That year, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was diagnosed with throat and tongue cancer. A brief recovery prompted him to leave the hospital and convalesce at home for a few months. Mackintosh was admitted to a nursing home where he died on December 10, 1928 at the age of 60. He is buried in Golders Green Crematorium in London.
[Detroit Institute of Arts - Watercolour and gouache over graphite on wove paper, 52.7 x 54 cm]