CHARLES HODGE MACKIE RSA RSW 1862 – 1920
Mackie was born in Aldershot, the son of an army captain of Scottish descent. The family moved to Edinburgh where the young Charles became a medical student for a very short time . He soon drastically changed his choice of career and began studying art at the Scottish Royal Academy School. He went on to establish a
studio in the city.
He married Anne MacDonald Walls, whose brother was a watercolourist, in 1893 and the newly weds honeymooned in Paris where Mackie would have been able to absorb many of the current artistic influences.
He painted in Ireland and discovered the attractions of the Yorkshire Coast, lodging at a farm in Roxby for several years. The young Laura Johnson was influenced by him, especially appreciating his ideas on colour. She said, decades later, ‘...I never paint a picture now without thinking of what he taught me. I shall always be grateful for the time and trouble he spent, which lifted me out of a morass.’
Work from his Staithes period does not often appear on the market, but when it does, it shows links with the work of Melville, Herald and Paterson. He was
interested in working with and developing colour theories.
He was a founder member of the Staithes Art Club in 1901 and the same year was elected a Member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colours. The previous year he had been elected Chairman of the Scottish Society of Artists and he became a full Member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917. He was a Vice President of the Yorkshire Union of Artists in 1907. His work is in public
collections in the National Gallery of Scotland and in Dundee, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Perth and Whitby. He exhibited at Agnew and Sons, Colnaghi & Co. Galleries, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Goupil Gallery, the
International Society, the Walker Gallery Liverpool, Manchester City Art Gallery, the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours and the Yorkshire Union of Artists.
Bibliography:
Staithes Group Centenary Exhibition, Rosamund Jordan 2003
Oil Paint and Grease Paint, Autobiography of Laura Knight, Penguin Books 1936
The Staithes Group, Peter Phillips, Phillips and Sons, Marlow1993
The Yorkshire Union of Artists 1888 – 1922, Dennis Child, Leeds Philosophical and
Literary Society Ltd, Leeds 2001
The Dictionary of British Artists 1880 – 1940, J. Johnson & A. Greutzner, Antique
Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 1976
© Rosamund Jordan 2005
