Style Imitating Art | The Mysterious Garden by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

light blue floral watercolor maxi dress,, lavender cropped cardigan, black cowgirl boots, gray chenille fedora, fall boho style, fall outfit, Shelbee on the Edge

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, and Marsha of Marsha in the Middle. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as presenter, selects an inspiration image that we will each post on our blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfit photos to the presenter by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the presenter will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join either! In fact, you don’t even have to join but you can still use the art to inspire an outfit just for the sake of trying something different. If you want to share your inspired outfit, we invite you do so on Instagram or any other social media platform that you prefer. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Shelbee, or Marsha or use #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the next SIA challenge!

This Week’s Presenter

It was my turn to choose our next art inspiration. As the time approached to announce my choice, I had absolutely nothing in mind. So I did a quick search for the best underrated masterpieces and found an article titled Overlooked Masterpieces, Lesser-Known Artworks That Changed Art History, which discusses 10 obscure works by famous artists and their significance in art history. I chose this 1911 watercolor and ink on vellum by British/Scottish artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh because the colors, the ethereal symbolism, and the delicate femininity of the work really spoke to me.

The Artwork

The Mysterious Garden by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

*Watercolor and ink over pencil on vellum mounted on board, 1911*

About the Artist: Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

Margaret Macdonald was born on November 5, 1864, at Tipton in Staffordshire, England, to a colliery manager and engineer and his wife. Along with her younger sister Frances, Margaret attended the Orme Girls’ School in Newcastle-under-Lyme. In 1881 at 16 years old, Margaret was visiting someone else’s house on census night and subsequently was listed as a scholar in that residence. By 1890, the Macdonald family was settled in Glasgow, Scotland, where Margaret and Frances were enrolled as day students taking design courses at the Glasgow School of Art. Margaret worked with a variety of mediums during her coursework including metalwork, embroidery, and textiles.

In 1896, Margaret began collaborating with her sister in their Glasgow studio at 128 Hope Street where they produced book illustrations, embroidered works, gesso panels, leaded glass creations, and repoussé metalwork, much of which was inspired by Celtic imagery, literature, symbolism, and folklore. In 1898, she joined the Scottish Society of Watercolour Painters and on August 22, 1900, she married Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who is frequently cited as Scotland’s most famous architect. Margaret’s most well known works are the gesso panels created for interiors such as tea rooms and private residences that were designed by her husband.

Although she was often somewhat marginalized in comparison to her husband’s work, she was nonetheless celebrated by many of her peers, including her husband, who reportedly wrote in a letter to her, “Remember, you are half if not three-quarters in all my architectural work.” He has also be credited as saying, “Margaret has genius, I have only talent.”

Margaret and her sister first met Rennie Mackintosh and artist Herbert McNair during their time at the Glasgow School of Art. Frances married McNair in 1899, the year before Margaret officially became a Mackintosh. The four art students had similar styles in their work and began collaborating and exhibiting together as The Glasgow Four.

An active and recognized artist of her time, Margaret contributed works to more than 40 European and American exhibitions between 1895 and 1924. However, she produced no new works after 1921 due to poor health. Five years after her husband’s passing, she died in 1933 at the age of 68. They had no children.

About the Art: The Mysterious Garden

The Mysterious Garden is a work produced by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh in 1911 using watercolor and ink over pencil on vellum mounted on board. It measures 17.7 x 18.7 inches (45.1 × 47.7 cm) with framed dimensions of 28.3 x 29.1 x 1.8 inches (71.8 x 73.9 x 4.5 cm). The original work was purchased with Art Fund support in 2011 by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, where the painting resides today.

The gallery description of this paintings states,

“From about 1900 Macdonald began to produce larger, independent watercolours alongside her craftwork. Here, a figure is seemingly asleep and may be dreaming, while above her stands a row of eight heads or masks which are perhaps part of her dream. The subject may have been inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird, which was performed in Glasgow in autumn 1910. Also, stylistically it owes much to the work of Aubrey Beardsley and the Dutch artist Jan Toorop, both of whom had a huge impact on Glasgow artists at the time. In 1912 Macdonald exhibited the work alongside two other watercolours in Edinburgh. They were very well received with a reviewer for The Glasgow Herald considering them ‘decoratively exotic fantasies born as it were in another sphere’.”

This painting is important in art history because it showcases Margaret’s “mastery of composition, her unique visual language, and her ability to embed emotional and symbolic depth into decorative form. The painting is a key example of how women artists contributed to the avant-garde movements of their time, not simply by supporting their male counterparts, but by shaping visual culture in their own right. It serves as a reminder to revisit overlooked artists and to expand our understanding of movements like Art Nouveau through more inclusive historical narratives.” (Source)

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About My Outfit

Initially, I had planned to restyle my new linen dress from LeMuse because the color is the exact same shade of purple that dominates the artwork. In fact, I probably could have used the exact same styling of the dress to satisfy this SIA challenge but there wasn’t any blue, black, or grey in that first iteration. Since the painting includes more than just shades of purple and white, I decided to take a completely different approach to my outfit interpretation.

I started with a new blue and white watercolor floral print maxi dress that I bought this summer as one of my possible dresses for the wedding we attended in Florida. I ended up wearing two totally different outfits for the wedding, but I liked this dress well enough to keep it. And I’m glad I did because it really came in handy for this art challenge.

The only problem with the dress is that it doesn’t include any purple at all. Since purple is the dominant color of the artwork, I still wanted something in that shade so I layered on a new lavender cropped cardigan. To tie the purple color to the blue and white dress, I added an old floral scarf that has hints of purple, grey, and black on a white background.

Because there is quite a bit of grey and black in the background of the artwork, I used those colors to accessorize with my old black cowgirl boots and my grey chenille fedora with a purple cameo brooch attached to represent all the faces at the top of the painting. I wore new silver earrings and two thrifted long tassel necklaces in black, grey, and silver.

At first, I was unsure if I liked the black and grey accessories with this primarily pastel outfit. But in the end, I think it all came together quite nicely to accurately showcase how the artwork inspired it. It also was a great way to transition this very summery sundress into something wearable for the cooler fall months.

I hope you have enjoyed this round of Style Imitating Art. If you want to play along and create your own outfit inspired by this beautiful painting, I will feature you in my gallery post on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Just be sure to submit your photos to me at shelbeeontheedge@gmail.com by 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. In the meantime, be sure to check out Salazar’s interpretation as well as Marsha’s take on it.

Until then, happy styling!