This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Deirdre Bryan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 24 May 1852, Ireland
Died: 4 August 1936
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Phoebe Anna Moss
Traquair, Phoebe Anna (1852–1936), mural artist, craftworker, bookbinder, and illustrator, was born 24 May 1852, third daughter of William Moss , physician, of Kilternan, Co. Dublin, and Teresa Moss (née Richardson), and was reared in Dublin and Wicklow. In her late teens she attended the government school of design at the RDS, where she learned the basics of draughtsmanship. One of her first assignments was to illustrate fossils for Ramsay Heatley Traquair, a Scottish paleontologist who was the keeper of the RDS museum. They married on 5 June 1873 and had three children: Ramsay (b. 1874), Harry (b. 1875), and Hilda (b. 1879). When her husband was appointed keeper of natural history at the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, they moved to Edinburgh in December 1874 and resided at 8 Dean Park Crescent. In the 1880s she became a member of the Edinburgh Social Union (ESU), a philanthropic society that sought to transform the lives of the working classes through art. Traquair retained an active interest in her art on a private scale, working from home, but the ESU’s commission for her to paint a religious-themed mural on the walls of the mortuary chapel of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (1885) was the first of three major mural projects in Edinburgh. Her second mural was on the walls of the song school at St Mary’s episcopal cathedral (1888–92), and her third, an ambitious and gloriously successful work, was in the catholic apostolic church in Mansfield Place (1893–1901).
In addition to her murals, Traquair engaged in other art forms including portraiture, embroidery, and illuminations in the 1880s. She expanded into bookbinding in the 1890s and began enamelling in 1901. She opened her own studio, the Dean Studio, in 1890. It was located a short distance from her home, and she continued to commute there once her husband retired and they left Edinburgh for Colinton in 1906. Some of her work is on display in the National Gallery of Scotland, including the studies for the mortuary mural, ‘The psalms of David’ in fifty-three illuminated pages (1884–91), and ‘The shepherd boy’ (oil painting, 1891). In 1889 and 1890 she provided illustrations for the monthly The Children’s Guide. Four embroideries, ‘The progress of a soul’ (1893–1902), were exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London (1903) and the World’s Fair in St Louis, Missouri (1904), and are held by the National Gallery of Scotland, by her bequest. Although firmly established in Edinburgh, she was included in the exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland in Dublin. She showed embroidered panels in the first exhibition (1895), illuminations in the second (1899), and enamels in the third (1904). She was honoured by her selection for the third exhibition, as entry had been restricted to only the best artists; however, she did not like being placed in a special ‘non-resident’ section and did not exhibit there again.
When her husband died (1912) she embarked on a series of travels – she had previously been to Italy and South Africa – and visited India (1913), Egypt (1914, 1921), and North Africa (1925). Elected the first woman honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1920, she remained active in her art, finding a niche decorating war memorials, until 1925, when failing eyesight forced her to retire. She died 4 August 1936, aged 84, and was buried beside her husband in Colinton churchyard. She left a tremendous body of work, much of which is held in many different locales, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and the cathedral of St James in Chicago. A retrospective exhibition of her work (which she signed ‘P.A.T.’, or occasionally ‘Phoebe A. Traquair’) organised by Dr Elizabeth Cumming, was held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1993. Her work was described by James Caw in 1898 as ‘the spontaneous efflorescence of her imagination, her religion, and her love of beauty’ (quoted in Cumming, Exhibition catalogue, 47). Her brother was Richard Jackson Moss, and Beatrice Moss Campbell, Lady Glenavy, was a niece.