'Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936) was an Irish-born artist who was an influential member of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland during the late 1800s and early 1900s and one of the first woman artists in Scotland to gain professional recognition.
She practiced a wide range of disciplines including embroidery, manuscript illumination, enamelwork, furniture decorations, murals, watercolours, and easel paintings.
This is a detail from her Progress of a Soul - The Victory, one of four panels of richly detailed embroidery she created between the years 1899 and 1902. In this fourth panel, the human soul is represented by a young man dressed in an animal skin who, after death, is reborn into eternal life, awoken with a kiss from a red haired, red winged seraph, suggesting he has entered the realm of heaven.
The panels were first exhibited at the 1903 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London where they were much admired by critics and public.'
