Glasgow’s most famous architect was married to artist Margaret Macdonald Macintosh. They met in school, at the Glasgow School of Art, where Margaret, her sister Frances Macdonald, Rennie Macintosh, and Herbert MacNair began collaborating and exhibiting together, becoming known as “The Glasgow Four.” The two men married the two sisters. Margaret’s career, though overshadowed by her husband’s, was substantial. She contributed to over forty exhibitions in Europe and America. The Mysterious Garden, one of her watercolor and pencil works on vellum, depicts a dreaming feminine figure in a blue dress, and birds with open beaks, and eight faces, or masks. I worked for four years in the private garden of a famous landscape architect. Gradually I discovered that his renowned garden (which serves as the cornerstone of his design career) is primarily the work of his wife. He gives talks, lectures, writes books, and serves on boards, while his wife manages the garden. She is one of the most creative, kind, intelligent, and hard-working people I have ever known. Now, whenever I find a “great” man, I wonder about her, the wife of the great man—her work, ideas, her influence, in the shadows. It could be fun to be a pair of artists—to live life as an ongoing, collaborative art project. At the museum at the University of Glasgow, visitors can view a replica of the interiors of The Mackintosh House, the collaborative living space of these two artists. He wrote to her in a letter: “Remember you are half if not three-quarters in all my architectural work.” Charles Rennie Macintosh was the husband of Margaret Macdonald Macintosh.
-Morgan English