Margaret macdonald mackintosh biography examples

The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our Historical Timeline. Margaret Macdonald was born in the English Midlands, where her father, a Glaswegian, worked as a mining engineer. After he retired inthe family moved back to Glasgow and the following year Margaret and her younger sister Frances both became students at the Glasgow School of Art.

That room was decorated with panels of Margaret's art: the Opera of the Windsthe Opera of the Seasand the Seven Princessesa new wall-sized triptych considered by some to be her finest work. Mackintosh did not keep sketchbooks, which reflects her reliance on imagination rather than on nature. Gleeson White wrote, "With a delightfully innocent air these two sisters disclaim any attempt to acknowledge that Egyptian decoration has interested them specially.

Margaret macdonald mackintosh biography examples: Margaret MacDonald was born on

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. Above all, her designs demonstrated a type of originality that distinguishes her from other artists of her time. Mackintosh and her husband Charles were part of the popular gesso revivaltheir gesso panels were shown at the eighth exhibition of the Vienna Secession in The Mackintosh-Macdonald interior designs exhibited in 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.

Her gesso panels are now on display in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. The —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.

Margaret macdonald mackintosh biography examples: Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, born 5

Her grandest work is the Seven Princessesthree 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 init disappeared from public view for a long time. Init 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. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. During these years, she concentrated on painting watercolours, also designing and executing jewellery and embroidery. Margaret Macdonald married Mackintosh in Her subsequent career is well documented, largely through the Mackintosh estate of drawings, watercolours and archival material Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgowwhich contains more than half of her total output.

The significance of her output and the nature of her collaboration with Mackintosh have stimulated much debate. For the early modernist scholars of Mackintosh, Macdonald was seen as the source of debilitating feminine frills and ornament in her husband's work. More recent scholars have stressed her role in liberating Mackintosh's creativity, in particular in the interiors of the early s, and claim for her greater recognition than just that of a maker of decorative panels.

Margaret macdonald mackintosh biography examples: Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (–), painter and

Macdonald's output was remarkably small. Only around works are documented, of which a half comprises watercolours and metalwork. Their quality could be uneven, and there was limited development from the visual language of roses, putti, stylised peacocks, plant forms and female figures, established in the s and early s. Subject matter tended to be drawn from literary sources such as the Bible, the Odysseythe poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, and the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck.

However the modest scale of her output is counter-balanced by its impact and critical reception. Her decorative and symbolic imagery resonated with the Zeitgeist of the period, typified by the enthusiastic response in Dekorative Kunst into her gesso panel in the Room de Luxe at the Willow Tea Rooms: 'Mrs Mackintosh is outstanding for her illustrations of mystic poetry; Maeterlinck's imaginative writing, and the visions of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, echo profoundly in her soul, and under their influence her hand creates drawings, paintings and reliefs whose unusually meticulous and delicate execution never hampers their spiritual clarity.