Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (5 November 1864 – 7 January 1933) was an English-born artist who worked in Scotland, and whose design work became one of the defining features of the Glasgow Style during the 1890s to 1900s.
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh
Biography[edit]
Born Margaret Macdonald, at Tipton,[1] Staffordshire between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, her father was a colliery manager and engineer. Margaret and her younger sister Frances both attended the Orme Girls' School, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire; their names are recorded in the school register.[2] In the 1881 census Margaret, aged 16, was a visitor at someone else's house on census night and was listed as a scholar.[3] By 1890, the family had settled in Glasgow and Margaret and her sister, Frances Macdonald, enrolled as day students at the Glasgow School of Art studying courses in design.[4] There, she worked with a variety of media, including metalwork, embroidery, and textiles. Additionally, she joined other groups, such as the Scottish Society of Watercolour Painters in 1898.[5]
She began collaborating with her sister Frances, and in 1896 the pair worked from their studio at 128 Hope Street, Glasgow, where they produced book illustrations, embroidery, gesso panels, leaded glass and repoussé metalwork.[6] Their innovative work was inspired by Celtic imagery, literature, symbolism, and folklore.[7] Margaret later collaborated with her husband, the architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whom she married on 22 August 1900.[8] Her most well-known works are the gesso panels made for interiors designed with Charles, such as tearooms and private residences.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh is frequently claimed to be Scotland's most famous architect. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh was somewhat marginalised in comparison.[7] Yet she was celebrated in her time by many of her peers, including her husband who once wrote in a letter to her, "Remember, you are half if not three-quarters in all my architectural work ...";[9] and reportedly "Margaret has genius, I have only talent."[10]
Active and recognised during her career, between 1895 and 1924 she contributed to more than 40 European and American exhibitions.[7] Poor health cut short Margaret's career and, as far as is known, she produced no work after 1921.[11] She died in 1933.[12]
Inspiration and style[edit]
Mackintosh did not keep sketchbooks, which reflects her reliance on imagination rather than on nature.[19] A few sources provided significant inspiration for her works, including the Bible, the Odyssey, poems by Morris and Rossetti, and the works of Maurice Maeterlinck.[19] Her works, along with those works of her often collaborating sister, defied her contemporaries' conceptions of art. Gleeson White wrote, "With a delightfully innocent air these two sisters disclaim any attempt to acknowledge that Egyptian decoration has interested them specially. 'We have no basis.' Nor do they advance any theory."[19]
The beginning of her artistic career reflects broad strokes of experimentation. Largely drawing from her imagination, she reinterpreted traditional themes, allegories, and symbols in inventive ways.[20] For instance, immediately following the 1896 opening of her Glasgow studio with her sister, she transformed broad ideas such as "Time" and "Summer" into highly stylized human forms.[21] Many of her works incorporate muted natural tones, elongated nude human forms, and a subtle interplay between geometric and natural motifs. Above all, her designs demonstrated a type of originality that distinguishes her from other artists of her time.[22]
Popular work[edit]
Mackintosh and her husband Charles were part of the popular gesso revival, their gesso panels were shown at the eighth exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1900. The Mackintosh-Macdonald interior designs exhibited in 1900 with their restricted colour palettes and fitted benches had an immediate impact on contemporary tastes, as the interior architecture was less lavish than earlier designs.[23]
Her gesso panels are now on display in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. The 2017–18 restoration of The Willow Tearooms building has seen a recreation of "Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood" installed in the original location within the Room de Luxe.
Her grandest work is the Seven Princesses, three wall-sized gesso panels showing a scene from a play by the same name, by Maurice Maeterlinck. This work was extremely popular in Vienna and its surrounding art scene. When the Waerndorfer villa was sold in 1916, it disappeared from public view for a long time. In 1990, it was rediscovered in a crate in the basement of the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. The gesso panels are now on permanent display in the city.[24]
In 2008, her 1902 work The White Rose and the Red Rose was auctioned for £1.7 million ($3.3 million).[25]
Winter, 1898.
Embroidered panels, 1902.
White Rose And Red Rose, 1902.
Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood, 1903.
Opera of the Winds, 1903.
Seven Princesses, 1907
Ophelia, 1908.
The Mysterious Garden, 1911.
The Opera of the Seas, 1915.
La mort parfumée, 1921.
Menu card design, 1911.
