Jessie Traill
| Jessie Traill | |
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Jessie Traill in 1936
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| Born | 29 July 1881 Brighton, Victoria, Australia |
| Died | 15 May 1967 (aged 85) Emerald, Victoria, Australia |
| Education |
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| Known for | Etching, Lithography |
| Notable work |
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Jessie Constance Alicia Traill (29 July 1881 – 15 May 1967) was an Australian print maker. 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".
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.
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.
Returning to Australia, Traill in 1900 studied under John Mather at his Austral Art School, before proceeding to the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1906, 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. 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. 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.
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