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Title

Blackout

1940

Artist

Jessie Traill

Australia

29 Jul 1881 – 15 May 1967

Artist profile

  • Details

    Date
    1940
    Media category
    Print
    Materials used
    etching, aquatint
    Edition
    no 14 from unknown edition, state 2/3
    Dimensions
    15.0 x 19.9 cm platemark; 23.3 x 29.5 cm sheet
    Signature & date

    Signed and dated l.r., pencil 'J.C.A. Traill 1940'.

    Credit
    Purchased with funds provided by the Australian Prints, Drawings and Watercolours Collection Benefactors 2021
    Location
    Not on display
    Accession number
    329.2021
    Copyright
    © Estate of Jessie Traill/Copyright Agency

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    Artist information
    Jessie Traill

    Artist profile

    Works in the collection

    23

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  • About

    Jessie Traill is among the most celebrated Australian etchers of the early 20th century. She studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne and from 1907-09 in London under Frank Brangwyn, whose choice of industrial subjects and etching style was a great influence on her.

    She exhibited etchings from 1908, with subjects ranging from urban and industrial to pastoral, and won international prizes for her prints. She was a member of the influential Australian Painter-Etchers' Society following her return to Australia in 1920.

    Traill moved to England in 1937 and remained there for the duration of World War II. While she was not directly occupied with the war effort, her etchings from that period reflected the times. Traill made etchings of Edinburgh Castle during the war, one floodlit, and another in complete blackout. These etchings reveal modern influences with flattened, simplified forms that reduce the landscape into a black mass, or void, reflecting the eery night time experience of wartime Britain.

Other works by Jessie Traill

See all 23 works