Walker Art Gallery reveals new Rennie Mackintosh show

Work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh is set to go on show at the Walker Art Gallery as part of its 2019 exhibition programme.

The show, which will be ticketed, runs at the William Brown Street gallery from March 15 to August 26, and will explore the work on Mackintosh and his contemporaries in what became known as The Glasgow Style – through 200 objects including stained glass, ceramics, furniture, embroidery and metalwork.

It follows the opening of an exhibition of 14 works by Leonardo Da Vinci that are in the Royal Collections Trust and are being shown at the Walker from February to May to mark the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance master’s death.

The May Queen by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Credit: Glasgow Museums Collection

The high-profile shows follow a busy 2018 at the William Brown Street gallery.

The John Moores Painting Prize celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, and the exhibition of shortlisted works for the 2018 competition – which has a first prize of £25,000 – was on show between July 14 and November 18.

Coinciding with the opening of the John Moores was a free exhibition of work by Sean Scully, widely regarded as the master of post-minimal abstraction and a previous John Moores Painting Prize winner.

John Moores Painting Prize judges. Credit: Mark McNulty

Sean Scully: 1970 revisited his early work, revealing his ongoing fascination with stripes and the spaces in between.

And Liverpool-based artist Leo Fitzmaurice curated an immersive exhibition of portraiture in one of the gallery’s rooms, as part of the Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme.

Fitzmaurice selected works from both the Arts Council Collection and National Museums Liverpool’s own collections, with a painting from the Lady Lever Art Gallery - Psamathe by Frederic Leighton - as the focus of the exhibition.

Leo Fitzmaurice: Between You and Me and Everything Else runs until next month.