Margaret MacDonald (artist)
Encyclopedia
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
whose design work became one of the defining features of the "Glasgow Style" during the 1890s.
Born Margaret MacDonald, at Tipton
Tipton
Tipton is a town in the Sandwell borough of the West Midlands, England, with a population of around 47,000. Tipton is located about halfway between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It is a part of the West Midlands conurbation and is a part of the Black Country....
, near Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
, her father was a colliery
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
manager and engineer. By 1890 the family had settled in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
and Margaret and her sister, Frances MacDonald
Frances MacDonald
Frances MacDonald was a Scottish artist whose design work was a prominent feature of the "Glasgow Style" during the 1890s.The sister of better known artist Margaret MacDonald, she was born near at Tipton, near Wolverhampton, and moved to Glasgow with her family in 1890...
, enrolled as students at the Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow School of Art is one of only two independent art schools in Scotland, situated in the Garnethill area of Glasgow.-History:It was founded in 1845 as the Glasgow Government School of Design. In 1853, it changed its name to The Glasgow School of Art. Initially it was located at 12 Ingram...
. There she worked in a variety of media, including metalwork
Metalworking
Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...
, embroidery
Embroidery
Embroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating fabric or other materials with needle and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins....
, and textiles. She was first a collaborator with her sister, and later with her husband, the architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...
. Her most dynamic works are large gesso
Gesso
Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these...
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
Herbert MacNair
James Herbert MacNair , was a Scottish artist, designer and teacher whose work contributed to the development of the "Glasgow Style" during the 1890s....
, she was one of the most influential members of the loose collective of the Glasgow School
Glasgow School
The Glasgow School was a circle of influential modern artists and designers who began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to sometime around 1910. Representative groups were: The Four , the Glasgow Girls and the Glasgow Boys...
known as "The Four". She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
, where she was arguably an influence on the Secessionists Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...
and Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods.- Biography :...
.
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 wrote in a letter to Margaret "Remember, you are half if not three-quarters of all my architectural..."; and reportedly "Margaret has genius, I have only talent." It is not known exactly which of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's works Margaret was involved with (or the extent to which she worked on them) but she is credited with being an important part of her husband's figurative, symbolic interior designs. Many of these were executed at the early part of the twentieth century; and include the Rose Boudoir at the International Exhibition at Turin in 1903, the designs for House for an Art Lover in 1900, and the Willow Tea Rooms in 1902. Sadly, poor health cut short Margaret's career—as far as we know, she produced no work after 1921. She died in 1933, five years after her husband.
Her best known works include the gesso
Gesso
Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these...
panel The May Queen, which was made to partner Mackintosh's panel The Wassail for Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tearooms, and Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowood, which formed part of the decorative scheme for the Room de Luxe in the Willow Tearooms
Willow Tearooms
The Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903...
. All three of these are now on display in the Kelvingrove Museum
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. The building houses one of Europe's great civic art collections...
in Glasgow.