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Lot 70
PHOEBE ANNA TRAQUAIR (IRISH/SCOTTISH, 1852-1936)
Diptych: The Resurrection: Why seek Ye the Living among the Dead; In those days Mary rose in haste and fled into the hill country
Closed14 June 2023
Price Realised
USD 25,200
More Information
Specialist note
Phoebe Traquair (née Moss) was an extraordinarily versatile artist, working across mural, illumination, calligraphy, embroidery, enamel and watercolor. Irish by birth, she studied at Dublin School of Art, before marrying and settling in 1872 in Edinburgh, where she became heavily involved in the Arts and Crafts movement.
In the 1870s and early 1880s, her artistic output was limited to embroidered domestic linen while she raised her young family. By the mid-1880s, she was mixing in intellectual and artistic circles, and had developed a strong interest in the work of William Blake and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her first professional commission was for the decoration of the mortuary chapel of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Lauriston Lane, Edinburgh, between 1885 and 1886. Traquair depicted Christian texts, designed to comfort parents, with richly romantic detail. Much of her early work took on religious texts or themes, with a moral aspect.
Her second major project was the decoration of the Song School of St Mary's Cathedral, Palmerston Place, between 1888 and 1892. The subject matter was taken from the canticle Benedicite Omnia Opera.
These two panels were the second of two works commissioned from Traquair by Dr. Alexander Whyte, an Edinburgh divine, educator and author in the late 1880s. The left panel is a replica of the central section of the East Wall decoration of the Song School, and was executed at the same time as that project. The figures are very much in Traquair's Aesthetic style of the mid to late-1880s.
In the 1870s and early 1880s, her artistic output was limited to embroidered domestic linen while she raised her young family. By the mid-1880s, she was mixing in intellectual and artistic circles, and had developed a strong interest in the work of William Blake and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her first professional commission was for the decoration of the mortuary chapel of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Lauriston Lane, Edinburgh, between 1885 and 1886. Traquair depicted Christian texts, designed to comfort parents, with richly romantic detail. Much of her early work took on religious texts or themes, with a moral aspect.
Her second major project was the decoration of the Song School of St Mary's Cathedral, Palmerston Place, between 1888 and 1892. The subject matter was taken from the canticle Benedicite Omnia Opera.
These two panels were the second of two works commissioned from Traquair by Dr. Alexander Whyte, an Edinburgh divine, educator and author in the late 1880s. The left panel is a replica of the central section of the East Wall decoration of the Song School, and was executed at the same time as that project. The figures are very much in Traquair's Aesthetic style of the mid to late-1880s.