Artwork brings record Scots price

The White Rose and the Red Rose by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh sold for £1.7m

A decorated panel set a world record for the sale of a Scottish artwork.

The White Rose and the Red Rose, by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, was sold at auction for £1.7m.

Another panel by the same artist, The Heart of the Rose, was also sold in the same auction at Christie's in London and fetched £490,900.

Macdonald Mackintosh was the wife of celebrated Glasgow designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The panels were first displayed in 1902.

The person who bought the White Rose and the Red Rose panel was said to be a private US buyer.

Her work doesn't very often come up on the market Professor Pamela Robertson Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery

It was decorated with paint and jewelled gesso, a type of plaster.

The work was a collaboration between Macdonald Mackintosh and her husband.

The pair cooperated in many artistic enterprises, with the wife often creating works for the interiors of her husband's designs.

Professor Pamela Robertson, a senior curator at Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, said it was rare a treat for work by Macdonald Mackintosh to come up at auction.

"Her work doesn't very often come up on the market," she said.

"There is not that much that survived and much of what did survive is in public collections."

Macdonald Mackintosh was born in 1864 and died in 1933.

The works were bought in the 20th Century Decorative Art and Design sale.