In the late autumn of 1923 Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald, left Chelsea where they had been living since 1915 and moved to southwest France, probably at the suggestion of their friend JD Fergusson. They were settled at Amélie-les Bains by the end of the year and spent much of 1924 exploring the area around the coast at Collioure and Port Vendres. They returned to Amélie in November 1924 and Margaret wrote to their friend Jessie Newbery on 18th December. She describes Mackintosh as “happy as a sand boy - tremendously interested in his painting and of course doing some remarkable work… He is absorbed in this landscape – since we got here on Nov 22 he has been able to work outside every day but two – from 9.30 till three – in brilliant sunshine”.
This is almost certainly when he painted Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales and, possibly, the view of the farmhouse at Mont Alba. The village of Palalda cascaded down the hillside and Mackintosh took a distant viewpoint from across the Tech, looking up towards the village. In fact, the painting is a combination of views from several separate points and Mackintosh was obviously feeling confident enough, after a year in France, to make these painterly decisions rather than produce a straightforward topographical view. He even went as far as carefully cutting out pieces of paper to stick over some of the houses to change or re-arrange aspects of the composition. The hillside behind the town is omitted completely – a view only possible from the riverside – and the red tile roofs of the houses have been changed to grey and black, perhaps to suit the cold light of the winter’s day when Mackintosh was working here. These are sophisticated decisions, actions of an artist, not those of an architect making notes in a sketchbook. In this painting Mackintosh crosses the divide between artist and tourist, immersing himself in his subject, taking control of it.

Roger Billcliffe said:
Palalda, Pyrenées-Orientales, (watercolour on paper, 51.5 x 51.5 cms) Is undoubtedly the the most successful of his early watercolours painted in France, following a couple of more hesitant compositions. Margaret Macdonald, writing to Jessie Newbery from Amélie-les-Bains on 18 December 1924, describes Mackintosh busy painting in the Pyrenean sunshine, “happy as a sand boy" . This painting is where he settled many of the ideas which underpinned later watercolours, experimenting with changing local colour (the re-tiled roofs became grey) and with changes to his compositions, here realigning different features of the houses to reinforce or emphasise the composition. He even fixed a small piece of paper over part of the painting so that he could add different features to enhance the design.

Like Héré de Mallet, this painting was bought from the 1933 Memorial Exhibition by William Davidson, one of Mackintosh’s earliest supporters who had an excellent eye for the post-1914 watercolours and bought many of the best flower paintings and French landscapes, having first choice after Margaret’s death in 1933.
(Roger Billcliffe for The Fine Art Society, History of the New, June-July 2023)