Lot 8: 'The Opera of the Wind';'The Opera of the Sea', two inlaid gesso panels

Designed by Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Fritz W„rndorfer, Vienna, circa 1902 Gesso on panel, inlaid with abalone, set with string and glass beads 7 7/8in. x 7 7/8in. (20cm. x 20cm.) size of each panel (2) PROVENANCE Fritz W„rndorfer, Vienna American private collector in 1940 By descent Sotheby's New York, 14th June 1991, Lot 328 when acquired by the Fine Art Society on behalf of the present consignor LITERATURE The Studio, Vol. LVII, p. 72 Thomas Howarth, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement, London, 1977, pl. 60 Roger Billcliffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings and Interior Designs, New York, 1979, pp. 123-125, pl. 1902.G, 1902.I-K, 1902.17-18 Jude Burkhauser (Ed.), Glasgow Girls. Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum Kelvingrove Exhibition Catalogue, Edinburgh, 1990, p. 93, figs. 105 & 106 Charlotte Gere & Michael Whiteway, Nineteenth Century Design. From Pugin to Mackintosh, London, 1993, pp. 274 & 275, plates 344 & 345 Charlotte & Peter Fiell (Ed.), Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Cologne, 1995, p. 100 Egger, Robertson, Trummer & Vergo, A Thoroughly Modern Afternoon. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and the Salon W„rndorfer in Vienna, Vienna, 2000, pp. 66/7 et. al. Victor Arwas, Art Nouveau. From Mackintosh to Liberty, the Birth of a Style, London, 2000, p. 68 - Opera of the Sea illustrated Roger Billcliffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Textile Designs, San Francisco, 1993, p. 32 - oil and tempera painting for The Opera of the Sea illustrated Pamela Robertson, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Art is the Flower, Glasgow, 1995, p. 61, pl. 35 - oil and tempera painting illustrated Timothy Neat, Part Seen, Part Imagined. Meaning and Symbolism in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald, Edinburgh, 1994, p. 145 - oil and tempera painting illustrated EXHIBITION Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Glasgow Museums Travelling Exhibition, 25th May 1996 - 12th October 1997, Cat. Nos. 198i & 198ii Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, Travelling Exhibition in Japan, 15th September 2000 - 18th February 2001, pp. 100 & 101, Cat. Nos. 77 & 78 NOTES These two panels were made to fit in the piano, above the keyboard, which Mackintosh designed for Fritz W„rndorfer in 1902. They pre-date by three to four years the series of panels which were installed as a frieze in W„rndorfer's Music Salon. These later panels were inspired by Maeterlinck's The Seven Princesses and elements of the story can be identified in these two smaller panels. Although the panels were made, and signed, by Margaret Macdonald it is possible that she was working to a design by Mackintosh himself. In all of the gesso panels which Margaret made for Mackintosh projects - such as those at The Hill House, for the Turin Exhibition writing desk and for the Room de Luxe at the Willow Tea Rooms - the complexity and quality of the compositions are substantially different from the panels and watercolours which Margaret made on a speculative basis, unconnected with Mackintosh. Some dozen years later Margaret reworked the designs in a much larger and looser pair of canvases which again bear traces of Mackintosh's input; one of these is presently in the collections of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt.