"In 1904 Margaret completed the gesso panel Summer, which was then hung on the east wall of the drawing room at Dunglass Castle. The design is a progression of a design she did at Glasgow School of Art, which won the local design competition in 1894 for a ” design for a window of mosaic glass”.

Margaret often did this, working a picture in different mediums at different times of her life, sometimes with hardly any changes at all.

This panel is one of four depicting the four seasons as female figures. Here, Summer is an allegorical work in which a woman and four infants represent the fertility and greenness of the season. The stylized Art Nouveau figure is peering lovingly at her children, and they are all connected by the gesso lines within the piece. Mackintosh’s use of female figures to represent nature became a defining characteristic of her artwork and of the art style."