Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Redemption of Mankind

Embroiderer: Phoebe Anna Traquair

Date

c. 1887

Medium

Silk and metallic embroidery on linen

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Phoebe Anna Traquair was born in Dublin, Ireland and moved to Edinburgh in 1873 where she built a flourishing career as an artist. Today she is recognized as the first professional woman artist of modern Scotland, and one of the first women admitted to the Scottish Royal Academy (1920). Traquair worked in a variety of media: embroidery, enamelwork, furniture decoration, easel painting, manuscript illumination, bookbinding, and mural decoration. The Redemption of Mankind is one of only twelve known embroideries designed and executed by Traquair. The subject of the proposed embroidery – Christian redemption – followed from themes developed in her first public mural project, the mortuary chapel of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (1885-6). Traquair inked the embroidery design on the ground fabric and worked the stitches entirely on her own. All told, it took eighteen to twenty months to complete and overlapped with the painting of the Song School at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, a project which carried forth the themes of redemption and salvation. Europe

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