Phoebe Anna Traquair

Phoebe Anna Traquair was a significant and important figure in British art. 

She contributed widely to the Arts and Crafts movement, and was one of the first women artists in Scotland to achieve professional recognition. 

In the early 1880s in Edinburgh, the beginnings of Arts and Crafts practice lay in philanthropy as a means of bringing greater morality and deeper meaning into art and design. 
A programme of mural decoration was initiated in 1885 by the Edinburgh Social Union, responding to William Morris’ call for an art that would transform the everyday lives of the working classes.  

In 1884 the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh received a request from the Hospital Ladies’ Committee for a chapel space. The small disused hospital coalhouse, measuring only twelve by eight feet, was found and in April 1885, Traquair was formally invited by the Social Union to paint the walls, marking her debut as a professional artist. This is a study for the mural she created.

In Scotland she was seen as a contributor to the Celtic Revival along with the painter John Duncan, both saw the relevance of historical prototypes to modern decorative art. Her embroidered panels are a fine example, combining historical, decorative embroidery techniques with modern Symbolist subject matter. 

and The Psalms of David, 1884-1891.   

In the 1900s Traquair took up enamelling, jewellery and commercial book illustration. By the mid-1930s the modernist aesthetic had taken over and her work fell from public view; much of her legacy remained neglected and unseen until the early 1990s. Since this time, museums and galleries have been avidly collecting her work and re-establishing a reputation which was so high during her lifetime.