A rare watercolour by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh sold at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on 16 October for £94,500 (including buyer’s premium).

This stunning 1908 watercolour on vellum by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh is a highly interesting case when considering the contexts in which she and her sister were working. Titled ‘Ophelia’ on its old gallery label verso, it also bears the address of her studio at 45 Glebe Place, Chelsea where she worked from 1915 to 1923. It may be that the picture was also exhibited at the Kunstschau in Vienna in 1909 titled the “Dead Princess”. An article in the Glasgow Herald of the same year commented “…the “Dead Princess” is a work of ethereal beauty, and at the same time an earnest work of art. Such art is indeed a revelation”.