His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann.

[1][2] William's wife Margaret Mackintosh née 'Rennie' grew up in the Townhead and Dennistoun (Firpark Terrace) areas of Glasgow.

He and fellow student Herbert MacNair, also an apprentice at Honeyman and Keppie, were introduced to Margaret and her sister Frances MacDonald by the head of the Glasgow School of Art, Francis Henry Newbery, who saw similarities in their work.

Glasgow's link with the eastern country became particularly close with shipyards at the River Clyde being exposed to Japanese navy and training engineers.

This style was admired by Mackintosh because of its restraint and economy of means rather than ostentatious accumulation; its simple forms and natural materials rather than elaboration and artifice; and its use of texture and light and shadow rather than pattern and ornament.

In the old western style, furniture was seen as ornament that displayed the wealth of its owner; the value of the piece was established according to the length of time spent creating it.

In the Japanese arts, furniture and design focused on the quality of the space, which was meant to evoke a calming and organic feeling to the interior.

As with his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright, Mackintosh's architectural designs often included extensive specifications for the detailing, decoration, and furnishing of his buildings.

It has been suggested that this detailing may have been carried out in part by his wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh[14] whom Charles had met when they both attended the Glasgow School of Art.

Designs for various buildings for the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition were not constructed,[17] neither was his "Haus eines Kunstfreundes" (Art Lover's House) of the same year.

He competed in the 1903 design competition for Liverpool Cathedral, but failed to gain a place on the shortlist[18] (the winner was Giles Gilbert Scott).

Other unbuilt Mackintosh designs include: The House for An Art Lover (1901) was built in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow after his death (1989–1996).

[23] The first of the unexecuted Gate Lodge, Auchinbothie (1901) sketches[24] was realised as a mirrored pair of gatehouses to either side of the Achnabechan[25] and The Artist's Cottage drives, also at Farr by Inverness.

The so-called "Glasgow" style was exhibited in Europe and influenced the Viennese Art Nouveau movement known as Sezessionstil (in English, the Vienna Secession) around 1900.

[31] By 1923, the Mackintoshes had moved to Port Vendres,[32] a Mediterranean coastal town in southern France with a warm climate that was a comparably cheaper location in which to live.

The local Charles Rennie Mackintosh Trail details his time in Port Vendres and shows the paintings and their locations.

That year, Mackintosh had developed a lump in his tongue and a doctor friend in Port Vendres recommended that he return to London for treatment.

[34] In London, after a diagnosis of tongue cancer, a friend Jessie Newbery arranged for treatment at Westminster Hospital where the lump was surgically removed.

[34] A dispute with the upstairs neighbours in Hampstead forced Mackintosh and his wife to quickly seek other lodgings, and another friend Desmond Chapman-Huston offered his home at 12 Porchester Square, Bayswater, returning the hospitality that they had shown him whenever he had visited them in Glasgow.

The house forms an integral part of The University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery home to the world's largest collection of Mackintosh's work.

The House for an Art Lover was built in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park in 1996 as an interpretation of a design competition portfolio by Mackintosh and Macdonald from 1901.

This second fire caused catastrophic damage, effectively destroying all the interiors and leaving the outer walls so structurally unstable that large sections of them had to be taken down to prevent uncontrolled collapse.

Such was the global concern that a public commitment to faithfully rebuild The Mackintosh Building was made post-fire by then Director of The Glasgow School of Art, Tom Inns.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City held a major retrospective exhibition of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's works from 21 November 1996 to 16 February 1997.

In June 2018, a mural depicting Mackintosh and using elements of his distinctive style was created in Glasgow to honour the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth.