Mrs Mackintosh’s ‘lost’ work sold for £115k

A “LOST” painting by the artist wife of the architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh has sold for more than twice its estimate after going under the hammer for the first time in almost a century.

The Silver Apples of The Moon, the missing masterpiece by Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, was sold yesterday for £115,250 at an auction of 20th Century Decorative Art and Design at London auction house Christie’s.

Auctioneers had placed an estimate of between £50,000 and £70,000 on what Christie’s described as a “landmark discovery”.

The watercolour had disappeared from public view after it was last exhibited in Glasgow in 1913 and had last formed part of a private collection in Italy.

Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh already holds a world auction record for a Scottish work of art. Three years ago The White Rose and the Red Rose set the art world alight when it came up for sale at Christie’s for £1.7 million.