Frances MacDonald
Frances MacDonald McNair ( born August 24, 1873 in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, England; † December 12, 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish painter and craftswoman of the Art Nouveau style. Frances MacDonald McNair, her husband James Herbert McNair, her sister Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh and her husband Charles Rennie Mackintosh were the well-known artist group The Four.
Life and work
Frances MacDonald was born as the second daughter of a mining engineer in England. 1890 let the family down in Glasgow, where Frances and her sister Margaret at the Glasgow School of Art studying. There she soon learned to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James Herbert McNair know whose Kunstverständis corresponded in content, technique and form their opinion. Soon the four were a creative alliance and presented in 1894 for the first time their new avant-garde art against which attracted great attention and introduced her as The Four. Together they coined in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the Glasgow Style and exerted great influence on the development of Art Nouveau from. Mid-1890s, Frances left the school and taught along with her sister an independent studio in the center of the city. Together they worked on metal, graphics, textile designs and book illustrations and could their works in London, Liverpool and Venice show. During this time she was also a leading member of the Glasgow Girls, a group of designers and artists. Frances and Margaret MacDonald were influenced by William Blake and Aubrey Beardsley, but also the symbolism and decorative movements on the continent such as the Vienna Secession.
On June 14, 1899 Frances married her longtime boyfriend, James Herbert McNair and followed him to Liverpool, where McNair taught at the School of Architecture and Applied Art. The couple designed the interiors of their apartment in Oxford Street 54 and hired a Lady's Writing Room at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin. Frances also started to teach and developed remarkable skills in jewelry and textile crafts. On June 18, 1900, her son Sylvan was born.
The closure of the university in 1905 led to a gradual decline in their artistic career, came to the financial losses due to bad investments. In 1907, Frances gave regular art classes at the Glasgow School of Art in 1908, the couple moved finally back to Glasgow. In the following years, Frances created a moving series of symbolist watercolors, which contacted the topics of marriage and motherhood apart. Their exhibitions were very successful, however, so that after 1912 no further followed. 1913, the couple traveled to Canada, but returned in 1914 before the outbreak of the First World War back to Scotland. Frances MacDonald McNair died in 1921 in Glasgow. James Herbert McNair, of which from 1911 until his death in 1955 no artistic works have survived, destroyed a large part of their work. Her son Sylvan emigrated late 20s to Rhodesia. Most of her images are now in the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.
Symbolist watercolors
Woman Standing Behind The Sun
Man Makes The Beads Of Life
Prudence And Desire