“While acrylic gesso isn't the same stuff Botticelli used, it’s become an indispensable tool in every artist's arsenal.”

“This story, of an unlikely friendship between a lonely little boy and an isolated artist in a world growing dark with suspicion, is at the heart of Esther Freud's novel, Mr. Mac and Me.”

“The 'Glasgow Girls' is a term used to describe a group of women artists and designers who received international recognition for their work between 1885 and 1914.”

“Margaret and her sister Frances were day students at the Glasgow School of Art, where they met Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James Herbert MacNair.”

“Although influential, Mackintosh built relatively few projects, with his best known commissions – including the Glasgow School of Art, Hill House and Willow Tea Rooms – coming in a short 10-year period between 1895 and 1905.”

“Fifteen years ago, Esther Freud bought a strange cottage in a sleepy seaside Suffolk village. She acquired all its contents, too, but they weren't the only things she'd inherited…”

“…he pushed design toward its modernist future and influenced a wide range of artists, designers and architects, including Gustav Klimt, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus school and Frank Lloyd Wright.”

John Mackie introduces us to rare and important examples by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

“In Freud’s rhythmical sentences high artistry is clear…”