The year 1923 saw the Mackintoshes move from London to France, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, at Amélie-les-Bains.  Low sales of their artwork, and an increasing number of architectural projects failing to come to fruition saw times become tight for the couple. They would have been encouraged to make the move by their circle of friends in London. Among them, notably, would have been fellow Scot and artist J.D. Fergusson and his partner Margaret Morris, who were both veterans of long sojourns working in France.

As well as the obvious attractions of a change in light, climate and landscape, it made sense at a very practical level, offering a far cheaper way of life. France marked the first time in Mackintosh’s life where there were no distractions from or demands away from his painting practice. Perhaps inevitably for an architect, Mackintosh was drawn to the local townscapes of the area. He was not attracted to grandeur however, rather the organic occurrence of more vernacular groups of dwelling - like the town of Bouleternère, somewhat vertiginously arranged on a sloping hill, culminating in a pinnacle topped with small church of rudimentary form. As Margaret remarked in a letter to Jessie Newbery in1925, “the buildings here (in this region of France) are a perpetual joy to us”. These views were not directly topographical, instead often culminations of various viewpoints, arranged ‘just-so’ for the purposes of the paintings’ design.  

Like many of the French works, Mackintosh employs pale tones demarked by sparer uses of colour in a high key that frequently depart from realism; here in the blue used to delineate the shadows cast by the overhang of the red tiled rooves. In addition, the French watercolours utilise a very foreshortened pictorial plane, a device that again enhances the sense of pattern and design that so distinctly defines his work across all the media and genres he turned his hand to. These artistic choices combine to produce works of great sophistication. The paintings produced in France – between 10-15 a year – are considered very important, being a period of “remarkable evolution in his artistic practice”, as his biographer Roger Billcliffe describes it. Their importance also lies in the chronology of Mackintosh’s output. As Billcliffe continues, “…these works underscore his innovative approach to landscape painting and suggest a promising future as a painter, tragically curtailed by his untimely death from cancer in 1928.''