Margaret`s husband Charles Rennie Mackintosh wrote in a letter:

“Remember, you are half if not three-quarters of all my architectural talents. Margaret has
genius, I have only talent.”

An important aspect of the Glasgow Style was the role played by women, the most notable
being the sisters Frances and Margaret MacDonald. Frances married Herbert, ' Bertie', MacNair
and Margaret married Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both sisters had produced independent and
distinctive work before being introduced to Mackintosh.

By the middle of the seventeenth century in Britain the idea of the upper-class woman as a
“lady of leisure” had developed, and from the eighteenth century onward, women in industrialized
Britain adopted the aristocratic ideal of women as passive and dependent. However, the concept
of “separate spheres” that became so much a part of the century, and women began to have the
opportunity to be educated for themselves, Class was the most important factor in this education:
middle-class women were educated but not expected to support themselves; lower-class women
might have had the ideal of dependency but encountered the reality of having to work. As young
middle-class women attending day classes at an art school, Frances and Margaret Macdonald soon
met other like themselves: intelligent, interested in art-making, and if not intending to engage in a
highly competitive commercial market, at least aspiring to exhibit their works and become known
as artists. Most of these women came from professional families and could be educated as artists,
but were probably not expected to participate fully in the market economy associated with the
buying and selling of art. At the same time their purpose went much beyond obtaining marriageable
skills – those skills such as embroidery, watercolour painting or drawing, associated with being
the wife of a middle-class man.

While they were studying at GSA, the Macdonald sisters were considered by the “News”
critic, “thoroughly in earnest”, had “vivid imaginations” and were remarkably clever and original
but, continued the critic, it was “difficult to comprehend why two young ladies, with nothing of
gloom in their atmosphere, should spent their time in designing ghastly caricatures of nature”. The
work made by two young women was considered so threatening enables a twentieth-century
viewer to understand its implications in that historical location. Judging from the Glasgow press,
the public saw the Macdonalds as new woman and as subversive.

Students attending the GSA in the early 1890s were able to include more design courses in
their programme then in the past and, in addition, they were able to learn the more technical skills
associated with metalworking and fabric art. Frances and Margaret Macdonald studied figure
composition and ornamental design with figures applied to decorative or industrial art every year
during their four years of study. They also studied modelling for examination with William
Kellock Brown (the metalwork instructor). Margaret took courses in design ornamental and
freehand drawing, and also a course in advanced local examinations for anatomy.

At the turn of the 20th Century a group of women were, for the first time in history, allowed
to attend day classes at the Glasgow School of Art. Margaret and Frances, with Jessie Newbery,
Ann Macbeth and Jessie M. King became known as The Glasgow Girls and were instrumental in
the evolution of decorative and interior design, a design that became known as the 'Glasgow Style'.

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 Students like them have all contributed to the Glasgow School exhibitions at least by 1893,
when Frances`s “The Girl in the East Wind” was probably exhibited for the first time. This has
attracted the attention and commendation of all art critics in Glasgow. From this point, the
Macdonalds sisters who were in their final year at the GSA, were no longer recognized as
“students” like in their first two years, They began to se themselves as practicing artists, as
designers, and as having careers or at least as being able to lauch them. They had an interest in
establishing a working studio in which they could produce functional as well as fine art.

The beginning of Macdonald's artistic career reflects broad strokes of experimentation.

Largely drawing from her imagination, she reinterpreted traditional themes, allegories, and
symbols in inventive ways. 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. 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.

Margaret Macdonald`s designs sometimes search for a rigorous line and dramatic meaning,
particulary work like her drawing “The Path of Life” (1893), but her angular figures never achieve
the same stridency as her sister`s. Lucy Raeburn`s critics in the “Magazine” in Octomber 1893
directed attention to the “brilliant sisters Macdonalds” and also claimed that the work made by the
Macdonalds was original in idea but lacking in technical skills composed of inharmonious color.

Margaret`s design was wide-ranging and included watercolours, graphics, metalwork and
textiles. Arquably her greatest achievements were in gesso, a plaster-based medium, which she
used to make decorative panels for furniture and interiors.

In 1892 Francis Newbery, head of Glasgow School of Art, introduced Charles Rennie
Mackintosh and his friend, fellow architectural student, Herbert MacNair, to the MacDonald
sisters. Newbery noticed similarities in their style of work and encouraged them to collaborate and
to exhibit. They formed The Glasgow Four, whose creative output was heavily steeped in
mysticism and symbolism. This informal creative alliance produced innovative and at times
controversial graphics and decorative art design.

Collaboration was key to Margaret Macdonald`s creativity. The partnership with her sister
at 128 Hope Street, in the 1890s produced metalwork, graphics, and a series of book illustrations
developing a distinctive style influenced by mysticism, symbolism and Celtic imagery. Her early
work (1893-1897) belongs to what came to be known as the “Spook School” of Celtic expression.
Her collaboration with Mackintosh comprised primarily the production of panels for interiors and
furniture, notably for the Willow Tearooms 1904, the Warndorfer Music Salon in Vienna and The
Hill House. While exhibiting with the Secessionists in Vienna, they acquired friends among the
luminaries of Eastern Europe and her miniatures incorporating substances like sandstone and pearl
were revelatory to Klimt. A significant commission was also gained there: the Warndorfer Music
Salon, destroyed in World War I (the surviving panel from her Seven Princesses series hangs in
the Vienna Arts and Crafts Museum opposite works by Klimt that reflect her influence). The
precise nature of their partnership is difficult to define because little documentation survives.
However it is certain that Macdonald played an important role in the development of the
decorative, symbolic interiors of the early 1900s.
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 In the early 1900s, the Mackintoshes worked on a series of interiors, including 120 Mains
Street (1900), the couple's first marital home; the House for an Art Lover (1901), a competition
entry; the 'Rose Boudoir' (1902), an exhibition setting; and the Room de Luxe at the Willow Tea
Rooms, Glasgow (1903). MacDonald was unquestionably involved in the creations shaping the
look and feel, producing decorative gesso panels for them all.
Margaret worked closely with her husband, Charles Rennie Mackintosh on interior design.
Together they created futuristic interiors which, today, still feel thoroughly modern. Together they
produced innovative work, with both their styles drawing inspiration from Celtic imagery,
literature, symbolism and folklore.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Sisters of Glasgow: Margaret&Frances Macdonald | The Rose Gallery | Glasgow
The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald | Janice Helland

http://www.artscrafts.org.uk/branches/women.html
http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/foxweb/huntsearch_Mackintosh/summaryresults.fwx?searchterm=manufac+has+margaret+m
acdonald&browseMode=on&browseSet=Margaret+Macdonald
http://www.glitzqueen.com/art/mackintoshes.html
http://art-works.co.uk/index.php?main_page=page&id=3
http://www.scotland.org/features/margaret-macdonald
http://www.mackintosh-architecture.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/name/?nid=MMM
http://www.artscrafts.org.uk/branches/women.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/arts/margaret_macdonald_the_talented_other_half_of_charles_re
nnie_mackintosh.shtml