DESIGNED BY MARGARET MACDONALD AND CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH FOR FRITZ WÄRNDORFER, VIENNA, CIRCA 1902

These two panels were made to fit in the piano, above the keyboard, which Mackintosh designed for Fritz Wärndorfer in 1902. They pre-date by three to four years the series of panels which were installed as a frieze in Wärndorfer'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.