Violet Teague

Person pulling a rope on a porch, surrounded by trees and grass.

unknown photographer, possibly Una Teague, Violet Teague, Trawalla, Mount Eliza, Victoria c 1940–50, gelatin silver print, State Library of Victoria. Image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria

Born
1872
Died
1951
Young boy in dark clothing, holding a paint palette and brushes, stands against a light beige wall.

Violet Teague, The boy with the palette 1911 (detail), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra

Violet Teague (1972–1951) was an internationally acclaimed painter and printmaker, and is today known as one of Australia’s greatest portrait artists.

Born to an affluent middle-class Naarm/Melbourne household, Teague began her artistic training on a family trip abroad in the 1890s. She took classes at Ernest Blanc Garin’s atelier in Belgium and with Sir Hubert von Herkomer in England. During this time, Teague visited many of the major galleries of Western Europe, drawing lifelong inspiration.

Following her return to Naarm/Melbourne, in 1897 Teague enrolled at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall, where she continued her training in oil painting. An occasional landscapist, she later joined the Charterisville Summer School in Ivanhoe in 1899 to paint en plein air. The school was founded by Ethel Carrick’s husband, Emanuel Phillips Fox. Teague formed a lasting friendship with both Fox, and later Carrick and was a guest at their wedding in 1905.

Teague went on to exhibit her work frequently throughout her lifetime, showing regularly in Australia with the Victorian Artists’ Society. Overseas she won international acclaim as a painter, winning bronze and silver medals at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, and the Société des Artistes Français (Old Salon) in Paris in 1920. When Teague’s painting The boy with palette 1911 was awarded a silver medal at the Salon, Carrick went to collect the award on her behalf. She found that the certificate was issued to ‘Monsieur’ Teague which she had amended. When Teague died in 1951, Carrick fondly referred to her as ‘my oldest Melbourne friend’.1

Though best known for her portraits of respectable society figures, Teague was a multifaceted artist. In the early 1900s, Teague completed the first of seven altar paintings commissioned for Protestant churches locally and in Canada. She was also a pioneer of colour relief printing in Australia. In 1905, with her collaborator Geraldine Rede, she completed Night Fall in the Ti-Tree, an illustrated book of 18 woodblock prints for children.

Annabel McGowan, Assistant Curator, Australian Prints