Last week I talked about an exercise where I made series of studies of ‘The White Rose and The Red Rose’ by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. This week I’m going to talk about the original artwork and it’s creator. 

Margaret was married to the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and together they were half of the ‘Glasgow four’ – a collective of artists who pioneered Art Nouveau. The remaining two members were her sister (Frances) with whom she closely collaborated in creating art, and her sister’s husband (J. Herbert McNair)

One of the earlier tasks in the Adolfo Serra illustration course I mentioned previously was to see an artwork that you like in the flesh. I wasn’t able to do that for this piece before I created my studies (the original is held in different city from where I live), but I was able to go there during the winter break. 

And I am so glad I did.

This is one of my favourite pieces of art – I have an almost life-sized reproduction of it on the wall of my living room. And as beautiful as it is, the reproduction barely holds a candle to the original. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

I knew the original was much more textural than a flat reproduction could possibly show but I had no idea how different they would be. You see, this piece of art is not your typical painting. In fact, I can’t really refer to it as a painting at all because of the three-dimensional elements within in. It’s more like a painted bas-relief sculpture. It’s properly described as a gesso panel.

Macdonald used gesso (pronounced ‘jesso’) in a few different ways to make the art. She used it to prime the rough burlap canvas, but not quite how we might use gesso on a canvas today. She applied it roughly and the patchy, uneven nature of it allows the canvas texture to be seen in some places, her brush strokes in others. There are even blobs of it visible here and there, which almost looks careless, but I think not. Given the delicate and detailed work elsewhere, I suspect that is a deliberate messiness.

On the subject’s face, the gesso has been applied smoothly, to a glass-like finish. I presume it originally gave the face a flawless porcelain appearance, but time has cracked it such that it almost looks like she’s covered in fine dragon scales. I think it adds to the piece.

The raised lines you can see across the panel are also made with gesso and are thought to have been applied like piping on icing. Into those raised lines Macdonald placed glass gems that are believed to have been made by the artist herself.

The gesso has been coloured with watercolour, giving a very delicate coating of colour, more faint than you might realise if you have a reproduction that has (perhaps) been digitally tweaked, like I suspect mine has.

There’s no information left by the artist around what this, or any of her artwork is meant to mean, what the symbology represents. I really love that she refused to describe the meaning in her work, instead leaving it wide open. I think I appreciate the art all the more for not knowing, for not feeling like there’s a secret code, some sort of shibboleth embedded within it that I need to go away and learn before I can appreciate the work ‘properly’. It is, and no one person can honestly claim authority in understanding what the artist’s intent was. 

If you’d like to see the original too, it’s on exhibition at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. It’s currently in the free section. 

Side Note: I thought it was still on display in the Macintosh house which is a paid part of the Hunterian, so I paid for admission to the house and got a shock when I saw a reproduction hanging in there instead! Thankfully a kind museum guide pointed me to the original.

Visiting the house wasn’t a waste of time or money though. The house itself is gorgeous and well worth exploring to see how they lived. There are artworks on display there that are gorgeous. I particularly like these pieces made by Frances Macdonald (Margaret’s sister):