The Glasgow Girls: Frances MacDonald
Girl with Blue Butterflies, 1898
pencil and watercolour
43.5 × 100 cm (17 × 39½ in.)
auctioned at Lyon & Turnbull in 2012 for £121,250

Girl with Blue Butterflies — once known as Ophelia — is one of those works where Frances MacDonald’s gift for atmosphere comes through with remarkable clarity. The long, horizontal sheet gives the composition a drifting rhythm, as if the butterflies were guiding the girl through a moment held somewhere between daydream and quiet attention. MacDonald’s pencil sets the structure with her usual delicacy, while the watercolour — especially the soft, luminous blues — brings a gentle pulse to the scene.

The history of the title is almost a story in itself. The name we use today is a modern descriptive title introduced by Pamela Robertson, whose Doves and Dreams remains the most thoughtful study of Frances MacDonald and Herbert McNair. The earlier title, Ophelia, was suggested by Roger Billcliffe — whose writing on the Glasgow Four and the Glasgow Style has shaped much of the modern understanding of the movement — based purely on the mood and posture of the figure rather than any documented title. The auction note also mentions a proposal by Janice Helland, whose work on Frances and Margaret Macdonald has been essential in restoring their place within the Glasgow Style. Helland suggested that this might be the picture exhibited at the Sandon Studios in Liverpool in 1912, lent by Charles Reilly. Reilly, a prominent Liverpool architect and educator, appears only as the lender of that exhibition work, but no meaningful connection has ever been established between him and Frances MacDonald or the early ownership of this painting. Frances was showing recent work at the Sandon, and this sheet, several years older and different in tone, would have sat oddly among them. There is also no known link between Reilly and Mrs Mackenzie, the first documented owner, who believed the painting had been in her family for many years before it reached The Fine Art Society. These small threads of provenance give the work a sense of quiet continuity, as if it lived a long, private life before stepping into public view.

This is the largest of the watercolours MacDonald produced in 1898 — in fact, the largest painting she made that wasn’t conceived as a mural or decorative design. The subject remains unidentified, but it belongs firmly to her world of fairy tales and allegory. Compared to earlier works like Sleeping Princess (1896), which are rich in symbolic ornament and densely woven motifs, Girl with Blue Butterflies feels more spacious and emotionally direct. The darker, more unsettling imagery of her early 1893–96 period has been set aside here, though she never lost her sensitivity to the shadowed edges of folklore. Robertson notes a possible echo of Maris’s Girl and Butterflies (now in the Burrell Collection), and others have pointed to the influence of Burne‑Jones, whose presence can be felt throughout the Glasgow Style.

Whatever its sources, Girl with Blue Butterflies marks a gentle shift in MacDonald’s practice — a move away from illustration toward works made for exhibition, where mood and symbolic resonance take precedence over narrative. The transparent washes allow the paper to breathe, giving the butterflies a sense of weightlessness and the girl a soft, glowing presence. It carries all the hallmarks of her sensibility: elongated forms, feminine introspection, and a quiet emotional intensity that feels both modern and timeless.

Seen within the wider world of The Glasgow Girls, the drawing becomes even more resonant. Frances, alongside Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Jessie M. King, Ann Macbeth, and others, helped shape the visual language of the Glasgow Style at the turn of the century. Girl with Blue Butterflies reflects that shared vocabulary — the floating rhythm, the delicate line, the sense of a figure poised between reality and reverie. It stands as a reminder of how central these women were to the artistic identity of their time: not followers, but originators whose influence helped define early modernism in Glasgow.

More than a study, the drawing feels like a small celebration of movement, colour, and youthful attention — a work that still radiates its gentle energy more than a century later.

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