Stars in the River

Equally at home etching iron girders or towering eucalypts, Jessie Traill is considered one of Australia's most remarkable printmakers.

Observant and adventurous, Jessie Traill was among a core group of woman whose financial independence allowed them to concentrate on their art during the early twentieth century. She studied painting and drawing at the National Gallery School in Melbourne and took lessons in etching from prominent Melbourne printmaker John Mather. Intrigued by the medium, she later moved to England to study with key printmaker Frank Brangwyn, who brought a bold and experimental quality to her printmaking. Returning to Australia, Traill was one of the earliest artists to produce colour etchings.

An incessant traveller, Traill crossed the equator at least fifteen times during her lifetime, including three and a half years serving as a VAD nurse based in Rouen, France, during the First World War. From 1927 to 1932 she made regular trips north to draw the Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction, also venturing to remote regions including the irrigated soldier settlement at Red Cliffs near Mildura and the Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia.

She loved to drive in her Morris Oxford with Brisbane and Launceston, where she had family, becoming favourite destinations. However, many of her most remarkable works took inspiration from the bushland surrounding her rural property at Harkaway, near Berwick.

Now considered a key figure in early twentieth-century Australian printmaking, Jessie Traill was under-represented in collecting institutions until the late 1970s. The National Gallery of Australia first acquired prints by the artist in 1976 and is privileged to present this exhibition, which establishes Jessie Traill as a key figure in the history of Australian printmaking.

Experimentation in Europe

Artistic ambition led Jessie Traill to journey to Europe in 1906. There she was exposed to the masters of the Italian Renaissance and burgeoning modernist trends in France, which cemented her determination to pursue an artistic career. The following year, Traill enrolled at the London School of Art established by John Swan and Frank Brangwyn. Unorthodox and idiosyncratic, Brangwyn was acclaimed for his large-scale prints and utter disregard for conventional printmaking methods.

Traill attended Brangwyn's summer school in Belgium in 1907 and 1908. Under his guidance her style rapidly evolved beyond the simple and intimate prints she had produced in Australia. She began to work on a larger scale, freely exploiting rough biting and inking techniques to create lush tonal effects; and experimenting with elaborately designed compositions. She also explored gritty, industrial subject matter, playing with the decorative effects of interlaced scaffolds, girders and massed form.

These works demonstrate Traill's early experiments with new methods, from her tentative first steps in inking in The roadside, Flanders to her confident manipulation of plate-tone in the impressive Charing Cross Bridge.

She would continue to develop these themes on her return to Australia. Encouraged by the freedom that Brangwyn's vision revealed, Traill began to develop her own remarkable aesthetic, combining his bold touch with a poetry that was entirely her own.

Poetic landscapes

Growing up in Melbourne's bayside suburbs of Sandringham and Brighton gave Jessie Traill an early appreciation of the natural landscape. The twisting banksias and ti-trees that hugged the shoreline accompanied her coastal childhood, and would later find their way into her poetic etchings of rural landscapes.

These prints witness her eye for the grandeur of solitary trees or the shimmering of light through leaves. In 1912 Jessie and sister Elsie Margaret bought five acres of remnant bushland at Harkaway, near Berwick – 'every bit of it is paintable'. These idyllic surroundings were animated by the calls of bellbirds, magpies and cockatoos. After the First World War a studio was built in the field adjacent to Harfra, their cottage, and thickly planted with native trees and grasses. Her etchings of farming rituals suggest a practical understanding of the often uneasy balance between conservation and progress, and are interspersed with romantic vistas from her regular travels around Victoria and interstate.

During the 1920s Traill made several large etchings in her town studio, such as Good night in the gully where the white gums grow based on a stand of eucalypts in the nearby Grassmere Creek Gully.

These aquatints echo the soft filtered light and are considered among her most beautiful works. In her later years Traill would join the Australian Forest League and move permanently to Harkaway, interspersed with long periods abroad.

Decorative qualities of industrial subjects

Jessie Traill's interest in the decorative qualities of industrial subjects caused her to seek out and document large-scale construction projects. These included the settlement for returned soldiers and irrigation plant at Red Cliffs near Mildura, and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria Plant at Yallourn.

Work in this vein culminated in the artist's acclaimed series of drawings and prints depicting the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. From the beginnings of the project in 1927 to its completion in 1932, Traill regularly travelled to Sydney to record the emerging and ever-transforming structure. A feat of modern engineering, the nationalistic tenor of the project captured the imagination of the country with many artists including Grace Cossington Smith and Robert Emerson Curtis also depicting its progress. In addition, a themed exhibition celebrating the bridge's completion was hosted by the Australian Painter-Etcher Society in April 1923.

Traill's interpretations of the bridge are among her most impressive works. Etched lines embrace the intrinsic patterns and contrasts of the structure's scaffolds and girders, beginning with the early, frenzied stages of construction. This animation gives way to a palpable sense of stillness in The red light, Harbour Bridge, July 1931, in which the bridge is shown in totality; its steelwork arch sweeping across the Sydney Harbour skyline.

What we see is a solid mass of concrete and intricate lace work of iron made more intricate by the play of light and shade; something that giants might play with as a child would with his Meccano Set. - Jessie Traill, 1929

Later visions

By the 1930s Jessie Traill was a well-established artist, both in Australia and internationally. Her Sydney Harbour Bridge series had attracted national acclaim, and her prints had been displayed at the Royal Academy in London (1909, 1914), the Salon in Paris (1909, 1926), and won medals at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (1915).

Ever inquisitive about her surroundings, Traill was a constant traveller and continued to record the world around her. Her journeys led her to Scandinavia, the United States, Java, Europe and Great Britain. Traill moved to England in 1937 where she remained throughout the duration of the Second World War. She was not directly involved in the war effort, as she had been previously, producing etchings during this period that are distanced representations of the ongoing conflict abroad; the construction of mighty war ships, and blacked-out silhouettes of the Edinburgh skyline.

While she remained occupied with grand subject matter – landscapes and man-made engineering projects – Traill's focus shifted to include quieter images reflecting the concerns of her later years.

Central Australia

In 1928 Jessie Traill took a break from documenting the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and set off on a painting trip to Central Australia. She travelled over 600 kilometres, first by train to Oodnadatta and then by truck to Alice Springs. Arriving four years into 'a fearful drought', she was transfixed by the shapes and colours of the harsh, baked landscape. The remote location lent itself to long periods of uninterrupted painting around the Flinders and MacDonnell Ranges. She translated the earth tones of stone and scrub into the ochre, umber and sienna pigments of her watercolour palette. At the end of her visit, she held an exhibition in the local schoolhouse. The whole township turned out to see her drawings, simply pinned onto grey blankets.

The drought broke the next year, but it was not until 1933 that Traill returned to the red heart of Australia. With friends Una and Violet Teague, she visited the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg and met Arrernte man Albert Namatjira, who was making pokerwork pieces for the mission's craft industry.

Following their return to Melbourne the Teague sisters organised a charity art exhibition to raise money to secure a water supply for the mission; works were donated by notable Victorian artists including Jessie Traill, Frederick McCubbin, Hans Heysen, E. Phillips Fox, Rex Battarbee and Ethel Spowers. The exhibition raised over £2000, and in 1935 the community celebrated as a 7 kilometre pipeline was laid from Kaporilja Springs to the mission.

Traill's intimate world

Imbued with familiarity and warmth, these prints provide a glimpse into JessieTraill's private world. Unlike her more composed images of landscape and industry, there is a sense of immediacy and directness in these works. Solitary and stripped of extraneous detail they reflect the intimate relationships that she developed with those around her.

Creative and strong-willed, Traill surrounded herself with like-minded individuals. As an art student in London, a volunteer nurse in France during the First World War and an active participant in Melbourne's vibrant art and arts and crafts scene in the 1910s and 1920s, she was associated with similarly independent and adventurous women throughout her life, including fellow artists Violet Teague, Dora Wilson, Anne Montgomery and Margaret McLean. With these companions she worked in her studio, traversed Australia and Europe and exchanged ideas on art with enthusiastic fervour.

Yet Traill's most cherished relationships were with her three sisters, Kathleen, Elsie and Minna. After their mother's death in 1893, the sisters shared an unshakable bond. They never married, instead relying on each other and their profound religious faith for support and companionship. During the early 1900s Kathleen and Minna joined the Community of the Holy Name, Cheltenham, and Elsie and Jessie shared cottages in Sandringham and Harkaway throughout their lives.

Touring Dates and Venues

• Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, VIC
  1 August – 21 September 2014
• Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, NT
  6 December 2014 – 1 February 2015
• Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, QLD
  20 February – 10 May 2015
• Tweed Regional Gallery, NSW
  19 June – 2 August 2015
• Western Plains Cultural Centre, NSW
  15 August – 11 October 2015
• Geelong Art Gallery, VIC
  28 November 2015 – 14 February 2016