Christian Waller

Christian Marjory Emily Carlyle Waller (nee Yandell; 2 August 1894 - 25 May 1954) was an Australian printmaker, illustrator, muralist and stained-glass artist. At 15 she moved to Melbourne, where she studied at the National Gallery School. In 1915 she married fellow-student Napier Waller.

Waller was Australia's only professional woman stained-glass artist until the craft revival of the 1970s and was much sought after as an illustrator and stained-glass artist; after the Second World War, she had a five-year waiting list and more commissions than she could execute. Her glass adorns over 20 churches in Victoria and New South Wales.

Early life Waller was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, to Emily and William Yandell, a plasterer, who died when she was five, when she moved to Langston Street, Bendigo, to live with her sister Florence and husband Alexander James Sclater. She was one of seven children.

Early career

Christian studied painting at the Castlemaine School of Mines under Carl Steiner and then at the Bendigo School of Mines with Hugh Fegan. The mayor and the Masonic lodge raised money through the sale of her works by art union to send her to study art in Melbourne.

Christian moved to Melbourne in 1909 at age fifteen, where she studied at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall and exhibited in the Singer Depot windows in The Block, Collins Street, in 1910. While there she won several student prizes and exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society (1913–22). She illustrated numerous publications, such as Melba's Gift Book of Australian Art and Literature (1915), many published by Edward Vidler. She met and married fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller in 1916.

During the 1920s, Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). "Yandell’s drawings are an eclectic mix, ranging from depictions of the iconic Mad Hatter’s Tea Party through to densely drawn processional scenes and simple sketches of Wonderland’s inhabitants." Her skill in drawing was conspicuous and was praised by fellow students such as Ola Cohn. Her early illustrations partake of a range of influences from the 'golden age of printmaking', including Aubrey Beardsley, Kai Nielsen and Arts and Crafts illustration. Her linocuts exhibited Art Deco tendencies stylistically, while having a range of symbolic references drawn from classical and Arthurian mythology, Egyptian and Hermetic lore and astrology and numerology. She created linocut bookplates for many of her friends.

Her tour de force was the set of seven printsThe Great Breath (1932). These illustrated Theosophical doctrine drawn from Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and were well received by critics such as Blamire Young and Harold Herbert. and Hendrik Kohlenberg suggests that Waller undertook most of the physical production of the book in her Fairy Hills studio. Only a small number of the planned 150 book edition for The Great Breath was ever produced.

She wrote a second book The Gates of Dawn, illustrated with lithographs, but put it aside to help Napier with his Newspaper House mosaic commission, A third book, The Woman of Faery, was projected but never completed.

In 1942 she painted a large mural of the Nativity for Christ Church, Geelong and in 1937 one of The Robe of Glory for Fawkner Crematorium; by the end of her life she had completed more than a hundred stained-glass windows.

Stained Glass Beside her graphic works, Waller was a leading professional stained-glass maker, being at the time one the few acknowledged Australian woman professionals, beside contemporaries Amalie Colquhoun and Nora Burden. She and Napier had begun to work for William Montgomery, a leading trade glass firm, while still students, and Christian began creating her own commissions from 1927. In 1929 she and Napier travelled to Europe where they spent valuable time at the Arts and Crafts studio of British stained glass artist Veronica Whall in London and at An Túr Gloine in Ireland with which a number of women stained glass artists, Evie Hone, Beatrice Elvery, Wilhelmina Geddes, Catherine O'Brien, and Kathleen Quigly, were affiliated with founder Sarah Purse. On her return she devoted herself mainly to stained glass work, influenced by these studios. She was extensively patronised by the architect Louis Williams. From 1927 to 1953 she produced more than one hundred and twenty individual stained-glass panels. Courtesy University of Melbourne Archives In 1915 Christian married fellow art student Napier Waller who enlisted in 1916 and served in France, where he lost his right arm to injuries. He learned to use his left hand while recuperating, and Napier Waller's portrait (1932) of his wife The Bendigo Art Gallery holds her self-portrait (1915) Castlemaine Art Museum holds 11 works National Gallery of Victoria: 50 works Art Gallery of New South Wales; 4 works Art Gallery of South Australia Hamilton Art Gallery Ballarat Art Gallery Warrnambool Art Gallery State Library of Victoria State Library of Queensland

Publications Though Waller completed The Gates of Dawn it was not published in her lifetime. Her niece Klytie published it, as well as a facsimile edition of The Great Breath, with Gryphon Books in Melbourne in 1978.