Margaret MacDonald (artist)
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Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowood, 1902. |
For the Christian end-times prophecy, see Margaret Macdonald (Prophecy).Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh (
1865–
1933) was a
Scottish artist whose design work became one of the defining features of the "Glasgow Style" during the 1890s.
Born Margaret Macdonald, near
Wolverhampton, her father was a colliery manager and engineer. By 1890 the family had settled in
Glasgow and Margaret and her sister,
Frances MacDonald, enrolled as students at the
Glasgow School of Art. There she worked in a variety of media, including metalwork, embroidery, and textiles. She was first a collaborator with her sister, and later with her husband, the
architect and designer
Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Her most dynamic works are large
gesso panels made for the interiors that she designed with Mackintosh, such as Tearooms and private residences.
Together with her husband, her sister and
Herbert MacNair, she was one of the most influential members of the loose collective of the
Glasgow School known as "The Four". She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900
Vienna Secession, where she was a major influence on the Secessionists
Gustav Klimt and
Josef Hoffmann.
Macdonald, along with her sister, is one of the many "marginalized wives" that have suffered from patriarchal art historical discourse. She was celebrated in her time by many of her peers, including her husband who once said "Margaret is half if not three-quarters of all my work..." and "Margaret has genius, I have only talent."
Her best known works include the
gesso panel
Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowood, which formed part of the decorative scheme for the Room de Luxe in the
Willow Tearooms, and
Opera of the Winds.
*
Biography at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society*
works by Margaret Macdonald in the Hunterian Art Gallery Collections*
Information on The Group of Four from the Hunterian Art Gallery
