Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1881 Melbourne, Australia

Died: 1967 Melbourne, Australia

Year of Migration to the UK: 1906

Biography

Jessie Traill, one of the most important Australian printmakers of the inter-war period, was born at Brighton, a bayside suburb of Melbourne, Australia in 1881, the youngest daughter of a wealthy banker with an interest in the arts. She studied at the National Gallery School from 1901–06 under Australian impressionists Frederick McCubbin and John Mather. Mather was one of the first artists to practice etching in Australia; his plein air prints of the countryside around Melbourne would later provide inspiration for Traill's own work. From as early as 1904 her watercolours, drawings and etchings won prizes in exhibitions and competitions.

In 1906 Traill travelled to London with her father and sister. During a trip to Rome, her father died and she returned to London, staying in a flat in Putney and also renewing her friendship with fellow Australian artist Tom Roberts. She enrolled in art classes at the London School of Art (LSA) in Stratford Road, Kensington, under the signifcant and highly regarded etcher Frank Brangwyn, who played a key role in her artistic development, lodging nearby at 2a Pembroke Road. She soon made acquaintances among her fellow students: Helen Wilson, Bernard Leach and fellow Australian Edith Hope. In 1907–08 Traill travelled to Belgium and Holland with Brangwyn's summer classes and under his guidance, her style rapidly evolved beyond the simple and intimate prints she had produced in Australia. She began to work on a larger scale, freely exploiting rough biting and inking techniques to create lush tonal effects; and experimenting with elaborately designed compositions. Traill also explored gritty, industrial subject matter, playing with the decorative effects of interlaced scaffolds, girders and massed forms. Her use of larger plates, more forceful lines and the dramatic effects of chiaroscuro is reflected in her early Charing Cross Bridge (1908). In the latter half of 1907, Traill decided to broaden her experience, sitting in on classes at the Royal Academy, proudly receiving criticisms from John Singer Sargent and George Clausen and attending the latter's lectures at Burlington House. In 1908 she travelled to Paris to continue her studies at the Académie Colarossi and La Grande Chaumière and was inspired by the Art Nouveau movement. At the end of 1908, she was sufficiently confident to enter two works at the Salon in Paris and the Royal Academy of Arts in London; one of these, Scaffolding, London – Melbourne House (1908), a large etching on zinc, was sent to both the Salon and the Academy in 1909 and marked the beginning of Traill's interest in Brangwyn's great passion – the raw materials of modern industrial achievement. Throughout the rest of her career, two themes dominated: the Australian landscape, and the growth of the new nation as demonstrated in grand-scale construction projects. In 1909 Traill returned to Melbourne, exhibiting her work regularly in commercial galleries. In 1915 she won a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition for the etching Beautiful Victims, exhibited a year earlier at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 1915 she returned to London and enlisted with the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD), training as a nurse and entering the Convalescent Home for Wounded Soldiers at Gifford House; posted to No. 2 General Hospital, Rouen, France, she served as a nurse for the next three and a half years.

After the First World War, she returned to Melbourne and joined the newly-formed Australian Painter-Etchers Society, regularly taking part in their exhibitions and entering into a productive phase of her work in the 1920s. She worked with the largest plates that the press could accommodate and achieved dramatic chiaroscuro. Her prints from this period focused on two themes: the Australian bush and industrial subjects, such as factories and buildings under scaffolding. In 1925 she briefly returned to England, where she submitted several etchings to the annual exhibition of the Society of Graphic Arts and was elected member of the society. Back in Australia, her printed oeuvre culminated in a series of six etchings and two aquatints, produced between 1927 and 1931, on the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which form a remarkable record of what was then the largest and most ambitious engineering project in Australian history. As the interest in the medium declined, Traill stopped producing etchings in the 1930s and spent her later years at her cottage near Berwick, Victoria, as well as in England and France. She died at Emerald, Melbourne, Australia in 1967. Her work is represented in the British Museum in the UK and in many Australian collections.

Related books

Jo Oliver, Jessie Traill: A Biography (Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd., 2020)
Roger Butler and Tim Bonyhady (eds.), Stars in the River: The Prints of Jessie Traill (National Gallery of Australia, 2013)
Kirsty Grant and Cathy Leahy (eds.), On Paper: Australian Prints and Drawings in the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2003)
Claire Williamson, Industry and Nature: The Etchings of Jessie Traill (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1989)
Mary Alice Lee, 'Beautiful Victims: Bush Etchings by Jessie Traill', Art and Australia, Vol. 27, Spring 1989, pp. 98-102
Mary Alice Lee, 'An Australian Student of Frank Brangwyn: Jessie C. A. Traill in London and Belgium, 1907–1908', Art Bulletin of Victoria, No. 30, 1989, pp. 58-71
Roger Butler, 'Jessie Traill: Working in a Man's World', Imprint, June 1985
Mary Alice Lee, 'The Etched Work of Jessie Traill', Imprint, No. 2, 1983, pp. 11-14
Works by Jessie Traill (East Malvern: Important Women Artists, 1977)
Bethia Foot, Jessie Traill by Her Cousin Bethia Foot (unpublished manuscript, State Library of Victoria, 1966)
Catalogue of Paintings of Central Australia and Etchings by Jessie C.A. Traill (Brisbane: Gainsborough Gallery, 1929)

Public collections

Related organisations

Académie Colarossi, Paris (student)
Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris (student)
Australian Painter-Etchers Society (member)
London School of Art, London (student)
National Gallery School, Victoria, Australia (student)
Society of Graphic Arts, London (member)

Selected exhibitions

Modern Australian Women: Paintings and Prints 1925–1945, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2001)
Women on Paper: From the Collections: Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Australia (1995)
A L'hombre des Jeunes Filles et des Fleurs: In the Shadow of Young Girls and Flowers, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Australia (1995)
Eveolution: An Exhibition of Women's Art from the Newcastle Region Art Gallery Collection, Newcastle, Australia (1995)
A Century of Australian Women's Art (1880s-1990s), Angeloro Fine Art Galleries, Artarmon, Australia (1995)
Australian Women Printmakers 1910–1940, Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Castlemaine, Australia (1995)
Women Hold Up Half The Sky, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (1995)
Project 39: Women's Imprint, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1982)
Works by Jessie Traill, Important Women Artists, East Malvern, Melbourne (1977)
Herald Outdoor Art Show, Treasury Gardens, Melbourne (1953)
Annual Autumn Exhibition, Victorian Artists' Society Gallery, Melbourne (1931)
Paintings of Central Australia and Etchings by Jessie C.A. Traill, Gainsborough Gallery, Brisbaine (1929)
Old Salon, Paris (1926)
Exhibition of Australian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1923)
Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, San Francisco (1915)
146th Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1914)
Old Salon, Paris (1909)
141st Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1909)
138th Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1906)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Jessie Traill]