"The White Rose and the Red Rose," Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, 1902.
Mackintosh (1864-1933) was an influential artist and designer from the Glasgow School, a subset of the Art Nouveau movement. Born into a working class family and studying art with her sister, she married Charles Mackintosh, who was to become a celebrated architect.
Her work was inspired by Celtic mythology and folklore, literature, the Bible, the Odyssey, the poems of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the works of dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck. She left no sketchbooks behind, suggesting she went fully from her imagination.
This gesso panel (a sort of soft plaster over a coarse fabric), inset with glass beads, was originally part of an interior co-designed with her husband. Called the "Rose Boudoir" it was Scotland's entry into a design exposition in Turin, in 1902. There roses were stitched into cushions, traced on the wallpaper...all over. There was another panel, "The Heart of the Rose," but interpretation of the two has defied critics, as Mackintosh never said, or left behind any notes, of the works' meaning.
From a private collection.
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