£1,008
Auction: 12 October 2022 at 11:00 BST
with 40 drawings in colour by Carton Moore Park published by Gay and Bird 1900. Inscription in pencil to front endpaper: TO HENRY STEEL DAVIDSON FROM/ MARGARET MACDONALD MACKINTOSH AND/ CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH CHRISTMAS 1900, together with a folded 4-page notepaper headed ‘Windyhill/ Kilmacolm’ containing a handwritten list of “Kitty’s Books” from 1883 to 1928
Literature: Davidson, Hamish R. Memories of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish Art Review, 11, no. 4, 1968, from p. 2.
Note: Charles Rennie Mackintosh became acquainted with the Davidson family around 1894/95 and was commissioned in 1900 to design their new home, Windyhill in Kilmacolm. The Davidson’s remained lifelong friends and supporters of Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald.
William and Jean Davidson had three sons, William Cameron (1890–1975); Hamish Reid (1893–1972) and Henry Steel (1896–1915), who was killed in action in France. From 1898 (or earlier) until 1905 (or later) Mackintosh gave Mr and Mrs Davidson and each of their sons, Christmas gifts of books inscribed by Mackintosh until 1899 and, following their marriage, inscribed by Charles and Margaret Mackintosh from 1900.
In 1968, looking back more than 60 years, Hamish Reid Davidson refers to some of these books in his Memories of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Up to 1899, gifts to the boys were from “Uncle Tosh” and from 1900 were inscribed by Charles and Margaret in the form as can be seen in ‘A Book of Elfin Rhymes’. He also says that the joint inscription from 1900 was probably by Margaret rather than Charles as it was less flamboyant than the earlier Uncle Tosh inscriptions.
In 1967, Hamish Davidson compiled a list of seven Mackintosh inscribed books then in his possession (but since dispersed), a copy of which is in the Glasgow School of Art collections. This is very incomplete as the books given over the years by the Mackintoshs to the Davidson family must have numbered more than thirty. The list of seven includes only one for 1900 (to Hamish); A Child’s London by Hamish Hendry, published in 1900, with the same illustrator as A Book of Elfin Rhymes, Carton Moore Park; and only one gift to his youngest brother, Henry Steel Davidson for 1902. A Book of Elfin Rhymes is not among the seven on the list, nor are the gifts for 1900 to Mr and Mrs Davidson or William Cameron.
Other than the book in this lot, only one other Christmas gift to any member of the Davidson family appears to have survived which has a pasted-in inscription for Christmas 1899 from Mackintosh to Mr and Mrs Davidson. It was donated to the Glasgow School of Art in 2014.
With the book in this lot is a folded 4-page notepaper on Windyhill, Kilmacolm letterhead, headed “Kitty’s Books” and with a handwritten list of one book title each year from 1883 to 1928 and concluding with the words “The forty-fifth milestone of our friendship. The End”. How the notepaper and the book are connected is unclear. One possible, but unproven, explanation is that Mrs Davidson kept the Mackintosh-inscribed book after the death in 1915 of her youngest son Henry, and that like the Mackintosh exchange of books, the Davidsons were also in the habit of giving books to friends and the notepaper records one such series of annual gifts.
Frederick William Carton Moore Park (1876-1956) was born in Stewarton, Ayrshire. He was a student at the Glasgow School of Art from 1893-97. He exhibited a painting in Vienna at the 1900 Secession Exhibition which also provided Charles and Margaret Mackintosh with their first major European exposure. His early career focused on the illustration of children’s books. In a letter of 24th December 1898 from Mackintosh to the 8 years old Cameron Davidson, he says….”I am sending you this little book of animals which has been illustrated by a young friend of mine in Glasgow…..”. Perhaps this anonymous illustrator is Carton Moore Park and the book An Alphabet of Animals, newly published by Blackie.