James Herbert McNair

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James Herbert McNair

James Herbert McNair (born December 23, 1868 in Glasgow , Scotland , † April 22, 1955 in Innellan , Argyll , Scotland) was a Scottish painter and art nouveau artist . James Herbert McNair, his wife Frances MacDonald McNair , their sister Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh and their brother-in-law, the well-known artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh , belonged to the Glasgow School and together formed the artist group The Four .

life and work

1895 poster

James Herbert McNair, born and raised in Glasgow, began his artistic career in 1887 with studies in Rouen , France . In 1888 he took part in an architecture internship with John Honeyman in Glasgow. From 1888 to 1889 he attended evening school at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College . From 1888 he trained at the architecture firm Honeyman & Keppie, where he met Charles Rennie Mackintosh. From 1889 he also attended evening school at the Glasgow School of Art , where he and Mackintosh met the MacDonald sisters Frances and Margaret, whose understanding of art in terms of content, technique and form corresponded to their conception.

The four soon formed a creative alliance and first introduced their avant-garde new art in 1894, which attracted a great deal of attention and made it known as The Four . Together they shaped the Glasgow Style in the Arts and Crafts Movement and later exerted a great influence on the development of Art Nouveau. In 1895 McNair left the Glasgow School of Art, completed his training at Honeyman & Keppie and founded an independent studio in Glasgow, where he did not work as an architect but as a painter, graphic artist and artisan. In 1898 he celebrated great success with an exhibition of his watercolors in London.

On June 14, 1899, James Herbert McNair married his longtime girlfriend, Frances MacDonald. Together they went to Liverpool, where McNair taught at the School of Architecture and Applied Art . The couple designed the interiors of their apartment at 54 Oxford Street and exhibited a Lady's Writing Room at the Turin International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts. Frances also began teaching and developed remarkable skills in jewelry and textile crafts. Their son Sylvan was born on June 18, 1900.

The closure of the architecture school in 1905 led to a gradual decline in the couple's artistic career. In addition, there were financial failures due to bad investments, because together with a colleague McNair tried to re-establish the school, but had to close it again soon. In 1908 the couple finally moved back to Glasgow. However, their exhibitions were unsuccessful, so they did not undertake any further after 1912. From 1911 until his death in 1955, no artistic works by McNair have survived.

The couple traveled to Canada in 1913 , but returned to Scotland in 1914 before the outbreak of World War I. After his wife's death in 1921, McNair destroyed a large part of her works. In the early 1920s , McNair ran an auto repair shop in Linlithgow with his son Sylvan . Sylvan emigrated to Rhodesia at the end of the 1920s . McNair moved to Argyll , where he died in Innellan in 1955 . Most of his paintings are now at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Exhibitions

literature

Web links

Commons : James Herbert McNair  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME McNair, James Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1955
Place of death Innellan , Argyll , Scotland