Traquair

Bust of Phoebe Anna Traquair in Edinburgh

At the risk of boring regular readers, I want to follow up yesterday's Thomas Wallis blogpost with a post about another obscure artist whose work I encountered on the way home from Louth.

For years, Shirley and I travelled along the A631 road towards Gainsborough whenever we were visiting her parents - Charlie and Winnie. They lived in a small village by the River Trent where Charlie farmed the same land this his father and grandfather had tilled before him.

In those days, there were never any brown signposts in the vicinity of Gringley-on-the-Hill and Drakeholes. In Great Britain, such signposts indicate a visitor attraction. Perhaps ten years ago fresh brown signposts appeared showing the way to "The Traquair Murals".

To tell you the truth I did not give these signs much thought and besides by then Charlie and Winnie had both shuffled off their mortal coils so we didn't head out that way very often. I imagined that the murals would be faded old medieval paintings in a country church.

Anyway, on Monday morning, as we headed home at our leisure, Shirley  suggested that we should take a diversion to find out what these "Traquair Murals" actually were.

Soon we found ourselves in the village of Clayworth and a sign in the churchyard indicated that this is where the mystery would be solved.

How charming is the historic Church of St Peter. We were the only visitors and there ahead of us were The Traquair murals - filling the walls of the chancel - colourful and surprisingly modern.

The paintings were commissioned by Lady D'Arcy Godolphin Osborne in gratitude for the safe return of her son from the Boer Wars in South Africa. The artist that Lady D'Arcy picked was quite well-known at the time and mainly based in Edinburgh. She was Phoebe Anna Traquair (nee Moss) 1852-1936.

The work was completed in the summer of 1905. Although religious in nature and informed by muralists of the past, The Traquair Murals at Clayworth have, as I said previously, a modern feel about them in the "arts and crafts" tradition that was active in this country before World War I.

In the first two pictures, I successfully snapped details of Mrs Traquair's work but I give credit to Geograph colleague Julian Guffogg for the last two images as my own attempts were too blurry.