Phoebe Anna Traquair - Other Work

Phoebe Anna Traquair decorated two other Edinburgh buildings: the Mortuary of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and the Song School of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.

In 1885-6 Traquair decorated a dark, former coalhouse at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (then in Lauriston Lane), creating a chapel of rest and a place of beauty to comfort bereaved parents. The commission was arranged by the Edinburgh Social Union, a new philanthropic society which employed artists to paint public buildings and organised craft classes. Traquair led a campaign to preserve these murals when the Hospital moved to a new site at Sciennes, over saw the transfer of those panels that could be moved and, in 1896-8 (while working at the Catholic Apostolic Church) repaired and extended the murals.

The mural scheme at the Song School of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Palmerston Place, decorated between 1888 and 1892, illustrates the canticle Benedicite Omnia Opera as a celebration of all creation. In the imagery Traquair celebrated the relationship between the arts. Traquair included portraits of the clergy and choir of St Mary’s and of important poets, writers and artists as well as representations of nature in all its abundance and beauty.

In 1892 she turned down the opportunity to decorate the entrance hall of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. She was then offered the Mansfield Place Church by the Edinburgh Social Union, a philanthropic group who had also commissioned her first mural scheme. In the imagery of the Song School, Traquair had celebrated the relationship between the arts, and the Mansfield Place Church commission gave her a further chance to explore parallels between colour and music.

The Mansfield Place Church was the third of five mural schemes. In 1904-5 Phoebe Anna Traquair painted the choir of a fifteenth-century Church of St Peter in Clayworth, Nottinghamshire. Nearing the age of seventy she was asked by Lord Manners to paint the apse of the Chapel of All Saints, Thorney Hill, which she did from 1920 to 1922. These decorations were both painted during the summer months, where previously she had worked in all seasons. While these schemes recycled and adapted earlier ideas, she introduced portraits of her patrons and their friends.

Examples of her work in other media are to be found in the National Galleries of Scotland: her four embrioderies The Progress of a Soul (1893-1900, contemporary with her work at the Catholic Apostolic Church) at the National Gallery on the Mound and her self-portrait at the Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. The National Museum of Scotland has examples of her embroidery and enamel work and, in the Art & Industry gallery, the piano, with the case by Robert Lorimer decorated by Traquair. The National Library of Scotland holds examples of her illustrated manuscripts, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 'Sonnets from the Portuguese’. The original enamel heraldic plaques for the Thistle Chapel in St Giles are by Traquair and are still in place above the knights' stalls (with later plaques alongside). In Colinton on the outskirts of Edinburgh is to be found an example of architectural ironwork by Traquair, a gate and railings in wrought iron with foliage and animals, now beautifully restored.