As an architect, designer and watercolour painter, Mackintosh, the son of a Glasgow policeman, was the leading representative of the art nouveau style in Scotland. In 1897, while still an apprentice architect, he won the commission to design new premises for Glasgow School of Art, where he had studied. The School's director, Francis Newbery, has painted Mackintosh grasping the plans for the building in his hand. Glasgow School of Art is now recognised as one of the most important buildings of the early twentieth century but Mackintosh left Scotland in 1914, feeling that his work was misunderstood in his native country.