14 Facts About Jessie Traill

Jessie Constance Alicia Traill was an Australian printmaker.

Jessie Traill was born in Brighton, Victoria, on 29 July 1881.

Jessie Traill's 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.

Jessie Traill 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.

Jessie 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.

Jessie Traill was the most accomplished student from Australia that he taught.

Jessie Traill was successful again in 1914 with work hung at the Royal Academy.

Jessie Traill worked in hospitals, including at a convalescent facility in Roehampton in May 1915, then later in a military hospital in Rouen.

When in 1918 Australia first appointed official war artists, sixteen men were chosen; Jessie Traill was not included.

Jessie Traill dares to do a large drawing composed of enormous curves and angles and she does it successfully.

Sandy Kirby, writing for The National Women's Art Book in the mid-1990s, focussed on the earlier, fourth print in the series, Building the Harbour Bridge IV: The Ant's Progress, noting how it drew attention "to the technical feat of building, reflected as much in the viewpoint Jessie Traill selected as in the very medium of etching itself, with its linear emphasis echoing engineering drawing".

In 1935, Dora Wilson, artist and longstanding friend of Jessie Traill, painted a portrait of Jessie Traill, which was acquired by the State Library of Victoria.

Jessie Traill died on 15 May 1967 at Emerald, on the eastern fringes of Melbourne.

Jessie Traill was a lithographer, a technique in which she was similarly accomplished.