MacDONALD, Margaret

1864 - 1933

Margaret MacDonald was born at Tipton, near Wolverhampton on 5 November 1864, her father was a colliery manager and engineer. Margaret, and her younger sister Frances, both attended the Orme Girls' School, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. In 1881, 16-year-old Margaret was a visitor at Wood Terrace, Stoke-upon-Trent, the home of the Beech family. By 1890 the MacDonald family had settled in Glasgow and Margaret and her sister Frances, enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art, where she worked in a variety of media, including metalwork, embroidery, and textiles. Together with Frances, the pair opened the Macdonald Sisters Studio at 128 Hope Street, Glasgow. Margaret married on 22 August 1900, architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh with whom she also collaborated but MacDonald has been marginalised in comparison. The pair often made sketching tours in Norfolk and Suffolk and after her husband resigned his architectural practice in 1913, the following year they came to live at Walberswick, Suffolk, taking lodgings at Millside, which was next door to Francis and Jessie Newbery from where they coloured botanical drawings of the plants in the area. Although the images are clearly signed with a cartouche 'CRM' and 'MMM' for Margaret MacDonald MackIntosh, Margaret has never been properly credited with the colouring and pages signed just CRM alone, appear oddly incomplete. Margaret contributed to more than 40 European and American exhibitions. Poor health cut short Margaret's career and as far as is known, she produced no work after 1921. Margaret Mackintosh died on 7 January 1933, five years after her husband.

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Works by This Artist