Violet Teague

Biography

In the early 1900s, Violet Teague achieved notable acclaim, both locally and internationally, as a portrait painter. She was part of the new wave of women artists who pursued art as a profession rather than a leisure activity. Teague is also credited with co-creating the first Australian artists’ book and being one of the country’s first female art critics.

Born in Melbourne in 1872 into a well-off family, Teague began drawing at school. As a child and young woman she travelled with her family, visiting Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and England, studying and exploring galleries. She gained an admiration for Thomas Gainsborough and Diego Velázquez and artists of the 18th-century grand portrait traditions that she considered in relation to her own work.

Teague regularly exhibited her work in Paris salons, and in 1897 her portrait of Colonel Robert Rede was hung at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français. Soon after, she returned to Australia and joined the National Gallery School in Melbourne and the Melbourne School of Art, and participated in the Charterisville Summer School of 1899 run by E Phillips Fox. In 1902 she was appointed to the council of the Victorian Artists Society, with whom she would exhibit regularly. Her exquisite portrait Margaret Alice was displayed there in 1900.

In 1905, Teague and Geraldine Rede published Night fall in the Ti-Tree. Featuring woodcut illustrations by the two artists and haiku-like verses by Teague about bushland rabbits, the book is the first example of coloured woodblock printing in Australia, and is also held to be the first Australian artist book. Teague would continue to make Japanese-style woodcuts, and lectured on the technique at the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society until 1914.

Over the next decade, Teague exhibited prolifically in Australia and her portraits continued to receive recognition overseas, making her one of Australia’s most internationally renowned artists of the time. She won a bronze medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 for Dian dreams, her portrait of Una Falkiner. She won a silver medal at the Old Salon in Paris in 1920, and was hung prominently at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1921.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Teague focused on creating altar pieces for churches in Australia and overseas. She took a contemporary and regional approach – replacing shepherds with Australian light-horsemen, for example, and including Inuit and Cree men in a Canadian commission.

A philanthropist, Teague was involved in many charitable causes. In 1933, after visiting Hermannsburg in the Northern Territory and learning of the drought that killed nearly a third of the Aboriginal people at the mission, she organised a fundraising exhibition with her sister and fellow Victorian artists to build a water pipeline for the community. During this time she became friends with Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira.

Teague was also a prolific writer and critic, contributing to newspapers and art publications, and giving lectures and speeches. She continued to travel widely throughout her lifetime, before passing away in Mt Eliza, Victoria, in 1951 at the age of 79.