Jessie Traill

Jessie Constance Alicia Traill (29 July 1881 – 15 May 1967) was an Australian printmaker. 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 (artist) at his Austral Art School. In 1903 she kept a notebook of her lessons commenting on the etchings within it as they progress through various states. The notebook details her active engagement in the print making process and the tuition of John Mather. Together with jottings of sales, news clippings and a congratulatory letter from John Mather, her early success with the medium is documented.

Jessie Traill also studied at 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.

Traill's first notable successes were in 1909, when works by the artist were hung at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy of Arts, while her first solo show was opened in Melbourne. She was successful again in 1914 with work hung at the Royal Academy.