Violet Teague (1872–1951) was among Edwardian Australia's most fashionable and assured portraitists, although the art historical establishment was slow to acknowledge it. The daughter of a doctor, Teague was born in Melbourne and educated at home by a governess before completing her schooling at Presbyterian Ladies College, Burwood. In her twenties she undertook studies in art in Brussels and London, before returning to Melbourne and studying at the National Gallery School and the Melbourne School of Art. By the late 1890s, she'd already begun to secure portrait commissions – her painting of former goldfields commissioner Robert Rede was awarded an honourable mention at the Paris Salon of 1898 – and the portraits she exhibited in the Victorian Artists' Society exhibition in 1896 had attracted favourable attention. Her portrait of Una Falkiner won a bronze medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915; a portrait of family friend Theo Sharf was exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1920 (winning a silver medal) and in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1921. In addition, Teague was a pioneering Australian exponent of Japanese-style woodblock prints and gave lectures on the technique for the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society. Her work featured in the 1907 Women's Work Exhibition and in the British Empire Exhibition of 1924–1925. In 1932 she travelled in Central Australia, and was so shocked by the conditions in which Aboriginal people lived that she organised an exhibition in Melbourne that raised thousands of pounds to pay for a permanent water supply for the Hermannsburg community. During the First World War, she initiated a series of tableaux vivants of scenes from Australian and British history, which were presented to raise funds for civilian charities. Several of Teague's best paintings deftly combine tradition and modernity, portraying sophisticated, educated and independent women in settings and poses which ostensibly conformed to notions of 'appropriate' behaviour and femininity. Examples of Teague's work are held by the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2000, the Ian Potter Museum of Art mounted the touring exhibition The Art of Violet Teague.
