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Jessie Traill

{{Short description|Australian printmaker (1881–1967)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2015}}

{{Use Australian English|date=June 2015}}

{{Infobox artist

| image = File:Jessie Traill (cropped to square).jpg

| name = Jessie Traill

| caption =

| birth_name =

| birth_date = 29 July 1881

| birth_place = Brighton, Victoria, Australia

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1967|5|15|1881|7|29}}

| death_place = Emerald, Victoria, Australia

| nationality =

| known_for = Etching, Lithography

| training =

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| movement =

| works =

{{plainlist |

  • The red light, Harbour Bridge, June 1931 (1931)
  • Building the Harbour Bridge VI: Nearly complete, June 1931 (1931)

}}

| patrons =

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Jessie Constance Alicia Traill (29 July 1881 – 15 May 1967) was an Australian printmaker. Trained by Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, and by painter and printmaker Frank Brangwyn in London, Traill worked in England and France in the period immediately preceding World War I. During the war she served in hospitals with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Traill is best known for a series of prints created in the early 1930s depicting the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Critic and art historian Sasha Grishin describes her as "one of the great Australian artists of the 20th century".

Early life

File:Dora Wilson - Portrait of Jessie Traill.jpg (Pictures Collection, State Library Victoria)|alt=|left]]

Jessie Traill was born in Brighton, Victoria, on 29 July 1881. Her father was Scotland-born George Hamilton Traill, who had administered a vanilla plantation in the Seychelles, before becoming a bank manager in Victoria; her mother Jessie Neilley was Tasmanian.{{cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |id2=traill-jessie-constance-alicia-8840|title=Traill, Jessie Constance Alicia (1881–1967)|last=Lee|first=Mary Alice|year=1990|access-date=29 April 2014}}

Traill was one of four daughters of George and Jessie, all of them educated at a boarding school in Switzerland, where they learned French and German. The family were deeply religious Anglicans; two of Traill's sisters would later join religious orders, while Margaret would become a carver.{{sfn|Kirby|1995a|p=465}}

Returning to Australia, Traill in 1900{{#tag:ref|According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Traill studied with Mather from 1900; art critic Sasha Grishin places her commencement there at 1903.|group=notes}} studied under John Mather (artist) at his Austral Art School. In 1903 she kept a notebook of her lessons commenting on the etchings within it as they progress through various states.Jessie Traill (1903) 'Copper Plate Etchings and Notes thereon, J.C.A. Traill 1903'. Jessie Traill Papers, State Library of Victoria, Ms 7975, Box F798/5 (b). The notebook details her active engagement in the print making process and the tuition of John Mather. Together with jottings of sales, news clippings and a congratulatory letter from John Mather, her early success with the medium is documented. {{#tag:ref|Jessie Traill's 1903 notebook Jessie Traill (1903) 'Copper Plate Etchings and Notes thereon, J.C.A. Traill 1903'. Jessie Traill Papers, State Library of Victoria, Ms 7975, Box F798/5 (b) reveals in intimate detail her lessons with John Mather.

For example, the notes on an etching that Jessie Traill considered a failure: Ground marked twice lines far too open & apart no mysterious depths drawing shaky, confused & altogether a failure, Mr Mather could not tell which way up.

Mounted at 90 degrees from her notes and without visual cues, the correct orientation of the etching is difficult to determine.

Later in the etching, Boat Builder's Shop, she includes some common place items in the foreground that leave no doubt as to the orientation of that etching.

Boat Builder's Shop was exhibited in Melbourne, Adelaide and Launceston in 1905. The etching was praised in reviews and sold for 15/0. John Mather sent her a congratulatory letter which she mounts in the notebook together with news clippings of the day.

In 1906 she notes that the etching has been sold to Lady Northcote, wife of Australia's Governor-General Sir Henry Northcote 1904 -1908.|group=notes}}

Jessie Traill also studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1906,{{#tag:ref|Kirby states the period was 1901 to 1905.{{sfn|Kirby|1995a|p=465}}|group=notes}} where she was taught by a leading member of the Heidelberg School, Frederick McCubbin. Her fellow students were mostly women and included Hilda Rix Nicholas, Norah Gurdon, Ruth Sutherland, Dora Wilson, and Vida Lahey.{{sfn|Pigot|2000|p=6}} In March 1906, Traill and her sister Minna, together with her father, sailed for England, while her two older sisters, Kathleen and Elsie, remained in Victoria.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71528217 |title=The ladies' pages |newspaper=Australian Town and Country Journal |location=Sydney |date=14 March 1906 |access-date=30 April 2014 |page=40 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71591366 |title=Melbourne Lady's Letter |newspaper=Australian Town and Country Journal |location=Sydney |date=17 April 1907 |access-date=6 May 2014 |page=43 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} George died while they were travelling in 1907, and is buried in Rome.

Traill studied in London under Anglo-Welsh painter and printmaker Frank Brangwyn, as well as taking classes in summer with him, in Belgium and the Netherlands. She was the most accomplished student from Australia that he taught.{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=38}}

Early career, 1908 to 1931

Traill's first notable successes were in 1909, when works by the artist were hung at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy of Arts,{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=38}} while her first solo show was opened in Melbourne. She was successful again in 1914 with work hung at the Royal Academy.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26904194 |title=Australian artists |newspaper=The West Australian |location=Perth |date=1 May 1914 |access-date=6 May 2014 |page=7 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

When war broke out in 1914 Traill, like fellow artist Iso Rae,{{cite journal|last=Snowden |first=Betty |year=1999 |title=Iso Rae in Étaples: another perspective of war |journal=Wartime |publisher=Australian War Memorial |volume=8 |pages=36–41 |url=http://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/8/articles/iso_rae.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130411164433/https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/8/articles/iso_rae.pdf |archive-date=11 April 2013 }} joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment. She worked in hospitals, including at a convalescent facility in Roehampton in May 1915,{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article76600198 |title=Our folks at home |newspaper=The Prahran Telegraph |location=Vic. |date=15 May 1915 |access-date=6 May 2014 |page=1 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} then later in a military hospital in Rouen.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article142982270 |title=Australians abroad |newspaper=The Australasian |location=Melbourne |date=13 November 1915 |access-date=6 May 2014 |page=48 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} Traill and Rae became the only Australian women artists to portray the war while in France. When in 1918 Australia first appointed official war artists, sixteen men were chosen; Traill was not included.

Back in Australia, Traill in 1921 became a member of the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, and entered its exhibitions. Her works from this period reflected her interest in both Art Nouveau and in the woodblock printing of Japan.

Sydney Harbour Bridge series

When the Australian Painter-Etchers Society in 1932 held its only thematic exhibition, Sydney Harbour Bridge Celebrations, Traill contributed a series of seven prints. The works comprised six etchings completed across the period 1927 to 1931, and a coloured aquatint created after construction was finished in 1932.{{sfn|Kirby|1995|p=201}} These have become Traill's best known and most highly regarded images. At the time they were created, the artist Arthur Streeton observed:

Melbourne should be proud of that fine draughtswoman and etcher Miss Jessie Traill. By incessant labour and observation she has won for herself a high position by her fine sense of design and her most capable rendering of very difficult subjects. She dares to do a large drawing composed of enormous curves and angles and she does it successfully. There is no other artist in Australia today who can compare with her in the fine and varied exhibition of Sydney Bridge and other designs which will open today at the Athenaeum Gallery. Her drawings of the Harbour Bridge from 1927 to 1931 form a triumphant and original record of that mighty masterpiece of steel, and it would be well if the finest of them were acquired and housed as a national collection and an artistic record of the structure.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4449995 |title=Art exhibitions |newspaper=The Argus |location=Melbourne |date=3 May 1932 |access-date=6 May 2014 |page=10 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Describing the series as "perhaps the finest representations of this genre", National Gallery of Australia curator Roger Butler singled out her Building the Harbour Bridge VI: Nearly complete, June 1931 for comment, with its "towering, skeletal structure framed by foreground cranes".{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=90}} Sandy Kirby, writing for The National Women's Art Book in the mid-1990s, focussed on the earlier, fourth print in the series, Building the Harbour Bridge IV: The Ant's Progress,{{Cite web|url=http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/201.1975/|title=Building the Harbour Bridge IV: the ants' progress, November 1929|last=Traill|first=Jessie|date=1929|website=AGNSW collection record|publisher=Art Gallery of New South Wales|access-date=10 May 2016}} noting how it drew attention "to the technical feat of building, reflected as much in the viewpoint Traill selected as in the very medium of etching itself, with its linear emphasis echoing engineering drawing".{{sfn|Kirby|1995|p=202}}

File:Jessie Traill.jpg)]]

Reviewing an exhibition of Traill's works, art critic Christopher Allen, writing for The Australian in 2013, considered the images of Sydney Harbour Bridge to be "her greatest achievement".{{cite news|url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/imprint-of-the-divine-jessie-traill/story-fn9n8gph-1226637819087|title=Imprint of the divine Jessie Traill|last=Allen|first=Christopher|author-link=Christopher Allen (critic)|date=11 May 2013|work=The Australian|access-date=29 April 2014}}

Later career, 1932 to 1967

In 1935, Dora Wilson, artist and longstanding friend of Traill (they had studied together and shared a Melbourne studio), painted a portrait of Traill, which was acquired by the State Library of Victoria.{{cite web|url=http://gallery.slv.vic.gov.au/image.php?id=950|title=Portrait of Jessie Traill|last=Wilson|first=Dora|date= 1935|work=Cowen Gallery|publisher=State Library of Victoria|access-date=29 April 2014}} Another portrait of Traill, by Janet Cumbrae Stewart, is held by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Traill died on 15 May 1967 at Emerald, on the eastern fringes of Melbourne.

Technique

As a printmaker, Traill worked on zinc plates in etching and aquatint.{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=38}} Her biographer Mary Lee observed that in the 1920s Traill "worked with the largest plates that the press would take and achieved dramatic chiaroscuro". She was also a lithographer, a technique in which she was similarly accomplished.{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=46}}

Exhibitions

Legacy

Butler collected works by Traill throughout his tenure at the National Gallery of Australia, which one reviewer considered was responsible for the "rediscovery of an artist previously almost unknown to the public". When the Gallery held a retrospective of her work in 2013, it described her as "a key figure in the history of Australian printmaking".{{cite web|url=http://nga.gov.au/Traill/|title=Stars in the river: the prints of Jessie Traill|year=2013|publisher=National Gallery of Australia|access-date=29 April 2014|archive-date=13 May 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140513010620/http://nga.gov.au/Traill/|url-status=dead}} Author and art critic Sasha Grishin reviewed the exhibition for The Canberra Times, concluding that the show "reasserts the supremacy of Jessie Traill as one of the great Australian artists of the 20th century".{{cite news|url=http://www.canberratimes.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/etcher-saw-beauty-in-nature-industry-20130322-2glrf.html|title=Etcher saw beauty in nature, industry|last=Grishin|first=Sasha|date=23 March 2013|work=The Canberra Times|access-date=29 April 2014|archive-date=30 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170430060449/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/etcher-saw-beauty-in-nature-industry-20130322-2glrf.html/|url-status=dead}} Roger Butler observed of Traill's etchings that they were "the most poetic and technically refined prints produced in Australia before World War II".{{sfn|Butler|2007|p=90}}

Notes and references

Notes

{{Reflist|group=notes}}

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

Bibliography

  • {{cite book|last=Butler|first=Roger|title=Printed. Images by Australian Artists 1885–1955|publisher=National Gallery of Australia|location=Canberra, ACT|year=2007|isbn=978-0642-54204-5}}
  • {{cite book|last=Kirby|first=Sandy|title=Heritage: The National Women's Art Book|editor=Joan Kerr and Anita Callaway|publisher=G + B Arts International / Craftsman House|location=Roseville East, NSW|date=1995|pages=201–202|chapter=Town & Country (Jessie Traill)|isbn=976-6410 45-3}}
  • {{cite book|last=Kirby|first=Sandy|title=Heritage: The National Women's Art Book|editor=Joan Kerr and Anita Callaway|publisher=G + B Arts International / Craftsman House|location=Roseville East, NSW|date=1995a|pages=465|chapter=Traill, Jessie Constance Alicia|isbn=976-6410 45-3}}
  • {{cite book|last=Pigot|first=John|title=Hilda Rix Nicholas: Her Life and Art|publisher=The Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press|location=Carlton South, Victoria|year=2000|isbn=0-522-84890-7}}

Further reading

  • {{cite book|last=Oliver|first=Jo|title=Jessie Trail: A biography|publisher=Australian Scholarly Publishing|date=February 2020|isbn=9781925984101|ref=none}}

External links

  • [http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/traill-jessie/ Jessie Traill] at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
  • [http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1cl35st/SLV_VOYAGER1632604 Papers of Jessie Traill] at the State Library Victoria
  • [https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/our-stories/jessie-traill-an-artist-at-war/ Jessie Traill: an artist at war] by Eve Sainsbury

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Category:1881 births

Category:1967 deaths

Category:Australian war artists

Category:World War I artists

Category:20th-century Australian painters

Category:Artists from Melbourne

Category:People from Brighton, Victoria

Category:Australian people of Scottish descent

Category:National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni

Category:Australian printmakers

Category:20th-century Australian women painters

Category:Australian women of World War I