Biography
Born Margaret MacDonald, at Tipton, near Wolverhampton, her father was a colliery manager and engineer. Margaret and her younger sister Frances both attended the Orme Girls' School, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. Their names occur in the school register. In the 1881 census Margaret, aged 16, was said to be a scholar. She was a visitor at someone else's house on census night. By 1890 the family had settled in Glasgow and Margaret and her sister, Frances MacDonald, enrolled as students at the Glasgow School of Art. There she worked in a variety of media, including metalwork, embroidery, and textiles. She was first a collaborator with her sister, and later with her husband, the architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Her most dynamic works are large gesso 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, she was one of the most influential members of the loose collective of the Glasgow School known as "The Four". She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession, where she was arguably an influence on the Secessionists Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.
Read more about this topic: Margaret MacDonald (artist)
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