On the reasoning behind Traquair’s choice of writers, scholar Elizabeth Cumming noted that, “Their words demanded the strength and density of the colours of manuscript illumination which allowed text and illustration to unite in one spirit.” (4) (3) She illuminated the work of many poets and writers such as Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Blessed Damozel (1850–1873), and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), which was a commission. (2) Traquair was also accomplished in embroidery, enamelwork, and the book arts. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, and the former Catholic Apostolic Church - all in Edinburgh. One of her greatest artistic roles was that of muralist, painting the walls of chapels for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, St. Phoebe Anna Traquair, née Moss, (1852–1936) was an Irish-born artist who found great success in her adopted home of Edinburgh during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If you’re still dreaming of French castles, monks, and luscious medieval gowns, it’s time to switch gears and imagine a woman artist in Victorian Edinburgh delicately illuminating a book by hand in a time when books were reproduced en masse. Mary, 1897, Gen.852, University of Edinburgh Library, Edinburgh, 0057153. Phoebe Anna Traquair, f.1r, Song School St. Reproductions by me, of medallions painted by me in a border on the walls of the Song School St. The only indication that perhaps this manuscript was not produced in the Middle Ages in a French monastery by a devoted monk, is the opening folio, which reads: The pictorial scenes within each central medallion visually display the narrative of the Christian creation story, while verses inspired by those found in Genesis chapter 1 sit below the illuminated image.
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