Who was Phoebe Anna Traquair, and why has she been excluded from the ‘canon’? Emily White explores Traquair’s life and work…
As part of the rehang of the Hunterian Art Gallery in 2023, a new room was created for works previously not considered ‘art’.
In the ‘Re-forming Canons of Art’ gallery, visitors encounter an array of media – from wallpaper and posters, to medals and jewellery. These works represent a category of art generally excluded from galleries in the past, that of ‘craft’.
Traditionally, creating a great work of art was said to require intellectual ‘genius’. Textiles, utilitarian in nature, and graphic arts, with their commercial origins, were seen to lack this value.
But the techniques and processes involved in creating the objects on display in ‘Re-forming Canons of Art’ suggest otherwise – Phoebe Anna Traquair’s The Ten Virgins casket and key (1906-1908) being an excellent example.
Phoebe Anna Traquair and the Canon
Phoebe Traquair produced works in a range of media outside of the academic tradition of the ‘fine arts’, such as manuscript illumination, bookbinding, enamelling, jewellery design and embroidery.
As a woman artist working from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, her practices were hampered by institutional and social structures. Working from home, she balanced her practice with domestic duties, and so was unable to receive the same training as her male counterparts.
Although Phoebe Anna Traquair was recognised in her lifetime, the development of modernist aesthetics from the 1930s onwards pushed works of the Arts and Crafts movement – particularly those by women – to the background.
As a result, she has been largely excluded from the ‘canon’, a word that The Hunterian’s new room explores. The canon describes what has historically been regarded as ‘high’ art: life drawing, painting and sculpture, produced by artists trained at an academy.
Works of art included in the canon have also tended to foreground artists privileged by race, gender and class. These ideas form a body of artworks considered to be of ‘indisputable quality’, which are seen as worth of study above others.
‘Re-forming Canons of Art’ seeks to challenge that.
Phoebe Traquair’s marginalisation in the canon is partly due to her role in the Arts and Crafts movement. However, if asked to name an artist central to the movement, who has been included in the canon, Charles Rennie Mackintosh or William Morris would perhaps come to mind.
Interestingly, Arts and Crafts was traditionally termed a ‘feminine style’, being delicate in its use of soft fabrics and intricate floral motifs. But the international renown of Mackintosh and Morris suggests that Traquair has not only been overlooked because of her involvement in the movement, but also because of her gender.
Life and Work
Born in Dublin in 1852, Traquair was a student at the Royal Dublin Society, where she took art and design classes. She illustrated fossil fish for the palaeontologist, Ramsay Heatley Traquair, who was then the keeper of the museum at the Royal Dublin Society.
The two married in Dublin in 1873, and moved from Dublin to Edinburgh when Ramsay Traquair became Keeper of Natural History at the Museum of Science and Art (today the National Museum of Scotland) in Edinburgh, where they lived and worked for the rest of their lives.
In Edinburgh, Traquair continued to illustrate her husband’s research papers, establishing herself as a figure of the Arts and Crafts movement. While many women associated with the movement had the support of a father or husband, she worked independently.
Traquair adorned her work with carefully observed details from nature, which she was deeply inspired by. She was also devoted to Christianity and understood her ideas as part of a larger plan to represent the rich vitality of spiritual life.
The Ten Virgins casket and key (1906-1908)
The Ten Virgins casket and key demonstrates the skills and techniques that Traquair refined as she began to work as part of the Arts and Crafts movement.
The wood-lined, silver-gilt casket, set with 12 enamelled copper plaques and semi-precious stones, responds to the increasingly machine-dominated production of manufactured goods, as an object of physical integrity and authenticity.
The enamelling depicts the ‘Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins’ from the New Testament and features narrative scenes which would have been recognisable to contemporary viewers.
In the 1900s, Traquair practised enamelling, and produced over 300 enamelworks in 20 years – of these, half were set as jewellery and half were display enamels, mounted on boxes, caskets and triptychs.
The technical process of enamelling involves mixing fragments of metal foil with liquid, unfired flux, to provide texture which reflects light and creates visual effects.
Medieval Sources
At this time, Traquair also became interested in the styles and colours of Medieval art. This is displayed through the dynamic poses of the figures on the casket, bold outlines and spectral colour palette.
The appearance of the clothing worn by the figures is shaped by Medieval traditions. It clings to the body like wet cloth, a technique referred to as ‘damp-fold’ drapery. This was used by medieval artists to create a decorative pattern and articulate figures, rather than emphasising three-dimensional forms.
The detail of the plaques reveals technical innovation and command of materials, but despite this, Arts and Crafts works such as The Ten Virgins were criticised.
Though respected for producing handcrafted goods at a time of mass industrial production, artists were seen as craftsmen, their art a product of manual labour.
Pre-Raphaelite Influence
The parallels between Traquair’s work and the Pre-Raphaelite’s reveals the gendered aspect of her marginalisation. The Pre-Raphaelites were a society of young painters and poets who opposed idealised art promoted by Renaissance artists, namely Raphael.
They depicted religious or literary subjects and studied nature closely to create realism. Traquair developed an interest in Pre-Raphaelite art, inspired by her friend, John Miller Gray – the first curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – who enjoyed poetry by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite.
Traquair was encouraged by Gray to produce illuminated manuscripts of Rossetti’s poetry. In Edinburgh, she was surrounded by a literary culture that she had engaged with by the mid-1880s.
Her study of poetry and paintings by members of the group is revealed through the appearance of the figures on the casket, whose pale complexions, abundance of hair, and elongated bodies closely resemble those represented by the Pre-Raphaelites.
Like Traquair, the Pre-Raphaelites looked to Medieval art in pursuit of representing a ‘truthfulness’ based on nature and eternal values. However, whilst Traquair responded to the Pre-Raphaelites and drew on the same sources, she was by no means included in the society of artists.
Challenging the Hierarchy
Phoebe Traquair is just one of many overlooked women artists who were part of the Arts and Crafts movement, despite demonstrating the knowledge and expertise necessary when working with metal, textile and manuscripts.
To Traquair’s detriment, textile and embroidery became strongly associated with femininity and have only recently been recognised as artworks which deserve to be included in the histories and stories told by galleries.
Only with ongoing efforts to dismantle the hierarchies of art and artists, will there be a greater acknowledgement Traquair’s instrumental work.
Join us for a tour at the Hunterian Art Gallery highlighting women artists as part of International Women’s Day, on the 8th of March 2025.
Explore more stories of women behind, or represented in, artwork – and their achievements and contributions to the art world – elsewhere on The Hunterian’s blog.
