Save one, none of the sixteen gesso panels Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh made between 1900-1909 for the interiors of her husband and artistic partner Charles Rennie Mackintosh are currently in their original spaces. Most of these works are now seen out of context, most notably the three most well-known panels The May Queen (1900), The Wassail (by C.R. Mackintosh, 1900), and O Ye All Ye That Walk In Willowwood (1903), all of which hang in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. The panels all depict highly stylized female figures that were allegorical representations of a type of mythical or divine feminine, and were an integral part the symbolic and narrative meanings of the interiors they graced. Some of them, however, also had direct literary references, which were often conflated with Macdonald’s own representative agenda.

Macdonald gesso panels were a critical part of the gesamtkunstwerk interior, working together with the rest of the objects in the room to create a narrative cycle that arguably strengthened the overall interpretation of the works, as well as demonstrating to potential patrons the kind of symbolic spaces the Mackintoshes preferred to create. While some attention has been paid recently to Macdonald’s contribution in terms of decorative influence, very few of these spaces have been given interpretive consideration in relation to their narrative schemes, of which the panels are at the centre. This paper analyses Macdonald’s gesso panel 'O Ye All Ye That Walk In Willowwood' in relation to its literary source, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s narrative Willowwood cycle of poems, published in 'The House of Life'. Through this lens, the panel’s original setting of the ‘Salon de Luxe’ in the Willow Tea Room is examined.