Phoebe Anna Traquair HRSA was born in Dublin and died in Edinburgh.Painter in oil of murals and figurative works including informal portraits, also enamellist and textile designer. Only recently has begun to reeive due recognition as one of Scotland's foremost lady artists and illustrators. Daughter of a Dublin physician. Trained Dublin School of Art c1869-72; gained Queen's prize for a fan and a medal for studies from the Greek. At the age fo 20 married Ramsay Traquair, an authority ion fish fossils. When her husband was appointed Keeper of Natural History at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, she settled in the capital at 8 Dean Park Crescent, remaining there for the rest of her life. The emergence of her creativity came through embroidery used in large pictorial panes influenced by Burne-Jones. Also worked in illumination and enamel. Designed several bookplates and began her first illuminated MS 'The Psalms of David' c1884. Remembered for her mural paintings executed in the mid 1880s and for the part she played with John Duncan in promoting the Celtic Revival. Frequently employed by Lorimer who wrote of her "I don't think I know anyone who is as sympathetically to me artistically. She's so sane, such a lover of simplicity, and the things that give real lasting pleasure are the simplest things of nature. The singing of birds, the bleating of sheep in the distance, morning and evening, everything and everyone she finds interesting and all this without a trace of self-consciousness". Helped establish the Scottish Society of Arts and Crafts 1898. At the rear of every stall in the Thistle Chapel are enamelled plates. There followed a series of panels for St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh on the theme of 'Benedectine'. Between 1893 and 1900 she was painting at the Catholic Apostolic Church in East London Street a large oil on plaster, using a watercolour technique depicting the 'Worship of Heaven' from the Book of Revelation. In 1900 the RSA declined to admit her as an hon member but relented in 1920 when she became the first woman so honoured. In 1912 was commissioned to execute a triptych altarpiece for the Chapel of St Andrew, Cathedral of St James, Chicago. Painted altarpieces for three Glasgow churches including All Saints Church in St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow 1920.