The Glasgow Girls: Frances MacDonald
The Frog Prince (1898)
Frances MacDonald
Watercolour and gold ink on paper
49 × 37 cm (19¼ × 14½ in)
Auctioned by Lyon & Turnbull in 2012 for £49,250

In 1898, Frances MacDonald and her sister Margaret Macdonald each created a watercolour drawing from the fairytale The Frog Prince. Both works were exhibited that year but remained unsold. In late 1900, they reappeared at the 8th Exhibition of the Vienna Secession, shown in a room conceived by Charles Rennie Mackintosh as a unified showcase for “The Four.” This group—Frances, Margaret, Mackintosh, and Herbert MacNair—embodied the spirit of the Glasgow Style: a fusion of symbolism, Celtic revivalism, and Art Nouveau elegance.

Frances’ interpretation of The Frog Prince leans toward psychological allegory. A solitary female figure, rendered in translucent washes and touched with gold ink, seems caught between enchantment and resignation. Her version evokes inner transformation rather than narrative resolution. Margaret’s counterpart, more ornamental and stylized, offers a contrasting sensibility—an invitation to explore the sisters’ divergent visual languages.

Frances MacDonald MacNair (1873 – December 1921) was a gifted Scottish artist and designer whose work spanned watercolour, embroidery, metalwork, and interior design. Born in Kidsgrove, England, she moved to Glasgow with her family in 1890. Alongside Margaret, she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art in 1891, where they met Mackintosh and MacNair. Together, they formed a creative alliance later known as The Glasgow Four, whose collaborative output helped define the visual language of the fin de siècle in Scotland and beyond.

In 1899, Frances married Herbert MacNair, and the couple relocated to Liverpool, where Herbert taught at the School of Architecture and Applied Art. They designed interiors, exhibited internationally, and contributed to the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Frances also taught and continued to produce deeply personal and often allegorical works, many exploring themes of femininity, transformation, and spiritual depth.

Despite her originality and technical skill, Frances MacDonald’s legacy was long overshadowed by the reputations of her sister and male peers. After her death in 1921—under circumstances still debated, with theories ranging from suicide to stroke—much of her work was destroyed by her grieving husband. What survives reveals a visionary artist whose contributions to modernism are increasingly recognized. Today, her works are held in major collections, including the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Frances is now celebrated among the Glasgow Girls, a term coined by curator Jude Burkhauser in her landmark 1990 exhibition highlighting the women artists of the Glasgow School of Art from 1880 to 1920. Their rediscovery has reshaped the narrative of Scottish art history, restoring rightful attention to Frances MacDonald’s luminous, haunting, and fiercely individual voice.

Recent scholarship and exhibitions have further illuminated her role in the development of British Symbolism and early modernist design. Digitization efforts and cataloging projects have made her surviving works more accessible, allowing for renewed appreciation of her poetic, often enigmatic visual language.

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