The Glasgow Style
At the turn of the century, a group of forward-thinking artists in Glasgow spearheaded the British Art Nouveau movement.
The May Queen stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw it. Combined, its three panels stretch fifteen feet in length, and each are over five feet tall. From a distance, it transported me to an Arthurian castle—a tapestry fit for a fairy realm.
As I drew closer, I could better discern its diverse materials. The panels were made of gesso on burlap, lending them a rich texture. Gesso, if you’re unfamiliar, is a white paint blend traditionally comprised of chalk, white pigment, and an animal glue binder. (Today, acrylic gesso is cruelty-free.) The composition was decorated with tin leaf and glass beads; twine brought the Celtic-inspired line work to life.
Four women (fairies?) attended to the May Queen. All ethereal beauties with flowers in their hair.
The May Queen (1900) was created by Margaret Macdonald for the Ladies’ Luncheon Room at the Ingram Street Tearooms in Glasgow. Here, we have a woman artist creating for a woman-owned business in a time when both were regarded with scrutiny. But Glasgow at the turn of the century was not just the “second city” of the British Empire, with its busy factories and industrial ports. It was also the epicenter of the Art Nouveau movement in the United Kingdom, and its leading art school held surprisingly progressive views about female students and instructors.
Catherine Cranston was a respected entrepreneur in Glasgow; an advocate of the Temperance Movement, she built her fortune by establishing tearooms throughout the city as an alternative to pubs. Despite her penchant for “outdated” Victorian clothing, Cranston wasn’t afraid of new artistic styles, and she supported up-and-coming artists by enlisting them to design her tearooms.1 Margaret Macdonald worked on the Ingram Street Tearooms in collaboration with her husband, the architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mackintosh designed the interior and the furniture for the Ladies’ Luncheon Room, as well as one of the friezes, The Wassail (1900). The crowning jewel, watching over the women at their tea, was Macdonald’s The May Queen.
First as friends and later as husband and wife, Mackintosh and Macdonald frequently collaborated on commissions, with Mackintosh as the architect and Macdonald as the painter, though they worked closely with each other on their respective designs. (Mackintosh called his wife his “spirit key”—they were deeply in love, a match made in heaven if there ever was one.) They were also, as you may have guessed from the title of this essay, the leading figures of the Glasgow Style, a local Scottish take on Art Nouveau. The Glasgow Style drew inspiration from Edo ukiyo-e, with its incredible precision and vibrant pigments, the British Arts and Crafts movement spearheaded by William Morris, and of course, the Celtic Revival of the late 19th century.
Charles Mackintosh met Margaret Macdonald at the Glasgow School of Art in 1892. Margaret’s sister Frances was also a student; it was at the school that Frances would meet her future husband, James Herbert McNair: Mackintosh’s friend and coworker at the architecture firm Honeyman & Keppie. (The art school offered night classes, which allowed working people like Mackintosh and McNair to attend.)
As I mentioned earlier, the Glasgow School was surprisingly open to female students in a time when such opportunities for women were extremely limited. The key pretext to this development was the passage of the Education Act of 1872. In England and Scotland, education was now compulsory for children ages five through twelve. However, art was not required, and the schools that did have art classes typically offered sewing courses for girls and technical drawing for boys. Girls from wealthier families could access artistic instruction via private schools or tutors.2
The Glasgow School filled a hole in the market by offering opportunities for a wider share of the population, including middle-class women like the Macdonald sisters. By the 1881 academic year, 28% of its students were women.3 Furthermore, the school welcomed female students in all kinds of disciplines, from traditional drawing and painting to metalwork. This free thinking translated into the art that emerged from its halls, especially when one compares the Glasgow School to contemporary institutions like the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. However, that doesn’t mean critics were instantly amenable to Art Nouveau.
The Macdonald sisters, Mackintosh, and McNair became known as the Four, but critics of their art found a different label for them: the Spook School. Chief criticisms of the Four were that their work featured “unnatural” and in some cases androgynous figures, highly stylized graphic designs, and obscure Symbolist references.4 Another source of inspiration for the Four were the works of English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, whose art certainly possesses a spooky edge.
None of this mattered to Francis “Fra” Newbery, who served as the director of the Glasgow School of Art from 1885 to 1917. Fra Newbery encouraged his students, male and female alike, to pursue their creativity to any avenue, and he included the Four’s art in his school’s annual exhibitions. It was the Four’s collaborative poster designs, with their bold graphics and tight line work, that would initially earn them their notoriety.5
Their work nevertheless caught the eye of important patrons like Catherine Cranston, and the new Glasgow Style of painting, architecture, and design (including Mackintosh’s iconic high-backed chairs) defined the Art Nouveau not just in Scotland but across the United Kingdom. Charles Mackintosh’s buildings can still be found throughout Glasgow, including what is now known as the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art. A key turning point arrived in 1900, when the Four participated in the Vienna Secession’s eighth exhibition. This event introduced their contributions to a much wider audience, and their art would have a profound influence on some of the show’s attendees, such as Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffman.
When I was first exposed to the Glasgow Style several years ago at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, I knew little about the movement’s contributors. I’ve since learned that the Glasgow Style remains an area of art history that receives less attention from researchers. Despite this, once one gets to know the movement’s illustrious flair—the Four’s designs, the ceramics of Jessie Marion King and Ann Macbeth, Talwin Morris’s graphics, the unique metalwork of countless artisans—it’s impossible not to see its impact on the broader narrative of Art Nouveau. The Glasgow Style may not be as conspicuous as other movements, but its legacy endures.
Related essays from The Crossroads Gazette:
Alison Brown, “Tea and Symmetry,” The Magazine Antiques, September 24, 2019, https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/tea-and-symmetry/.
Alison Brown, “Re-evaluating the Glasgow Girls. A timeline of early emancipation at the Glasgow School of Art,” CDF II International Congress, June 2015, http://www.artnouveau.eu/admin_ponencies/functions/upload/uploads/Brown_Alison_Paper.pdf.
Brown, “Re-evaluating the Glasgow Girls.”
Brown, “Tea and Symmetry.”
“The Shock of the New,” Frist Art Museum, 2021, https://fristartmuseum.org/the-shock-of-the-new/.
Thank you for this wonderful essay. I did the "Mackintosh Trail" two years ago and absolutely loved every minute of it. The building I enjoyed the most was the "House for an Art Lover." Even though it was built 80 years after Mackintosh designed it, it best showcases the Machintosh couple's artistic vision and amazing collaboration. The house is so airy and modern, and the Glasgow art style touches every object inside. I wonder why no high-end developer has licensed their designs and built similar houses. Living in a building like it would be a dream for many people.
The Glasgow Girls! So cool to see this. I was in love with the arts and crafts movement and art nouveau when studying down the way at Edinburgh College of Art. We visited the Glasgow school often because they were more wild, and we liked that :-D
The library in the Mackintosh building was gutted by a fire while everyone was preparing for degree shows, maybe that was around 2014? Then I heard the whole building caught fire again as they were finishing restoration. It's a beautiful building, much beloved by students and the community, now again in the final phases of a restoration (crossing fingers for Glasgow).