The Murals

Phoebe Anna Traquair was a highly versatile artist whose technique, throughout her career, can be best described as excelling in variety, imagination and technical accomplishment.

For this commission she used a variation of the ‘spirit fresco’ technique made famous in the late 19th century by Thomas Gambier Parry and Frederic, Lord Leighton.

This was a method of mural painting inspired by Italian fresco painting but adapted to withstand the unpredictable nature of the northern climate. Traquair simplified this technique to suit her own ends.

Never one to rest on her laurels, evidence suggests that the artist developed and adapted her method over the many solitary years she worked on the Mansfield Place scheme.

In summary, the execution began with preparing the walls with numerous layers of zinc white pigment thinned in oil and turpentine. This provided a bright, light-coloured ground layer for the preliminary sketch, probably charcoal-based, required to establish the composition.

Importantly, these preparatory layers were also deliberately textured to reflect the light and give added vibrancy to the subsequent application of colour.

Turning to the paint medium, the artist added heated beeswax diluted in turpentine to tubes of prepared artists’ oil paint. This combination would allow her to work quickly and once dry, the addition of wax would give the paint film a luminous, translucent quality.

The paint layers were generally quite thinly applied to allow the bright white underlayer to show through. If highlights were required, the paint was simply removed with a rag to reveal the layer below. It was a highly effective and economical approach.

Formal analysis carried out by Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland) prior to the conservation project identified a fairly limited palette of pigments used by the artist and these include terre verte, viridian, ultramarine, iron oxide earth pigments (ochres, umber, sienna, carbon black) also pink, red and yellow organic lakes.

Other techniques employed by the artist, with the play of light in the space very much in mind, are the incorporation of metal leaf (gold and aluminium) and raised relief work to selected decorative elements, such as the haloes and trumpets of angels. Both are cleverly designed to increase the impact of the design on the viewer when viewed from a distance.

Finally, it is highly likely that the artist applied a copal resin-based varnish as well as a wax-containing polish to complete the mural scheme. However, only fragments of these original coatings have survived.