Lot 433: Frances MacDonald, Margaret MacDonald and James Herbert McNair

Important poster, designed for The Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Printed by Carter and Pratt, Glasgow, Scotland. Recto printed with CARTER AND PRATT · ART POSTER LITHOs · GLASGOW.

93 1/2 x 40 in. (237.5 x 101.6 cm)

Lithograph in colors on four sheets backed on paper and linen.

circa 1895-1896

Les Affiches Étrangères illustrées, Paris, 1897, p. 35 Jude Burkhauser, Glasgow Girls, Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, Glasgow, 1990, p. 90, fig. 99, for the example in the collection of the Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries Wendy Kaplan, et al., Charles Rennie Mackintosh, exh. cat., Glasgow Museum, 1996, illustrated p. 92, fig. 53 Pamela Robertson, ed., Doves and Dreams: The Art of Frances Macdonald and James Herbert McNair, exh. cat., Hunterian Gallery, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 2006, p. 98 James Macaulay, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, New York, 2010, p. 65, fig. 51

Private collection, UK

“Glasgow Style,” the Scottish variation of Art Nouveau design, was characterized by organic motifs including elongated and stylized plant and figural forms. With elements of influence from Celtic art revival, Japonism and the Arts & Crafts movement, it had initially derived from the interaction of the four artists most associated with its international success: sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, Herbert McNair and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. "The Four" first exhibited together in the Glasgow School of Art Club Exhibition in 1894, in which the work of the Macdonald sisters in particular incited the reactionary epithet of “The Spook (or Ghoul) School” due to the exaggerated female forms and “ghoulish” images in their posters, perceived by some to be a “peculiar choice of subject for a young lady of the 1890s.” In 1895, the sisters began collaborating with Herbert McNair, receiving praise for the individuality of their work, and by 1896, they were joined by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, leading to the group’s international recognition. Their departure from the accepted precedent in decorative style attracted the attention of artists and designers of the Vienna Secession including Josef Hoffmann, who had seen the work of The Four and invited Mackintosh and “Monsieur M. Macdonald” to Vienna to take part in an exhibition, not realizing the latter was a woman. The visit would lead to several important commissions for the group of artists and result in an internationally compelling style, even influencing the painter Gustav Klimt, whose work in the coming years would make reference to that of the Macdonald sisters. Of the exceptionally rare surviving examples of the present design, two are housed in institutional collections in the United Kingdom: the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow.