Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frances Macdonald Mackintosh 

As an architect in training, Charles Rennie Mackintosh got to know fellow apprentice James Herbert McNair in the offices of the architectural practice Honeyman and Keppie, and together they went to evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. It seems likely that they met sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, students at the school during the day, at the School of Art Club, and the rest, as they say, is history: Frances and James married in 1899, and Charles and Margaret followed them up the aisle the following year. Even as students friends had called them 'The Four' - they were very much a team, and at times it is still hard to pin down who was responsible for what. 

For this talk I will concentrate on just one of the couples, and will try and take my lead from Charles, who once said 'Margaret has genius. I have only talent' - and include as much of her work as possible. However, for whatever reason, he was enormously productive, and far more of his work survives - undoubtedly, his role as 'Architect' meant that the decorative work which Margaret created is often seen in the context of his buildings, rather than in its own right.

We will look at their work individually, and as part of the group, seeing how The Four influenced the course of European modernism, and what it was that led to them going their separate ways - or, at least, to the divergence of their styles.