Violet Oakley (June 10, 1874 – February 25, 1961) was an American artist. She was the first American woman to receive a publicmural commission. During the first quarter of the 20th century, she was renowned as a pathbreaker in mural decoration, a field that had been exclusively practiced by men. Oakley excelled at murals andstained glass designs that addressed themes from history and literature inRenaissance-revival styles.
Penn meets the Quaker, a public mural by Oakley in thePennsylvania State Capitol inHarrisburg, PennsylvaniaAn 1896 lithograph by Oakley forThe Lotos LibraryRed Rose Inn Photograph of Violet Oakley and Jessie Willcox Smith facing the camera and Elizabeth Shippen Green and Henrietta Cozens, who are partially hidden, c. 1901, Violet Oakley papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.The Red Rose by Violet Oakley
She developed a commitment toQuaker principles ofpacifism, equality of the races and sexes, economic and social justice, and international government. When the United States refused to join theLeague of Nations afterWorld War I, Oakley went toGeneva, Switzerland, where she spent three years drawing portraits of the League's delegates which she published in her portfolio, "Law Triumphant" (Philadelphia, 1932). She was an early advocate ofnuclear disarmament afterWorld War II.
Oakley was raised in theEpiscopal church but in 1903 became a devoted student ofChristian Science after a significant healing ofasthma while she was doing preparatory study for the first set ofHarrisburg murals inFlorence,Italy.[4] She was a member of Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Philadelphia from 1912, when it was organized, until her death in 1961.[5]
She received many honors through her life including an honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree in 1948 from Drexel Institute.[1] At the 1904Saint Louis International Exposition, Oakley won the gold medal in illustration for her watercolors for "The Story of Vashti," and the silver medal in mural decoration for her murals at All Angels' Church.[6]
Around 1897, Oakley and her sister Hester rented a studio space at 1523 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia in the Love Building.[5] The sisters decorated the space with furniture loaned by their mother and a combination of antiques, fabric, and copies of Old Master paintings.[8] Oakley and her friends, the artistsElizabeth Shippen Green andJessie Willcox Smith, all former students of Pyle, were named theRed Rose Girls by him.
The three illustrators received the "Red Rose Girls" nickname while they lived together in the Red Rose Inn inVillanova, Pennsylvania from 1899 to 1901. They later lived, along with Henrietta Cozens, in a home in theMt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia that they named Cogslea after their four surnames (Cozens,Oakley,Green andSmith). In 1996, Oakley was elected to theSociety of Illustrators Hall of Fame, the last of the 'Red Rose Girls' to be inducted and the fifth women inducted since its founding in 1958. Cogslea was added to theNational Register of Historic Places in 1977 as the Violet Oakley Studio.[9][10]
Her home and studio atYonkers, New York, where she resided intermittently between 1912 and 1915 is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places as thePlashbourne Estate.[11]
Oakley was a member ofThe Plastic Club, aPhiladelphia organization established to promote "Art for art's sake". Other members includedElenore Abbott,Jessie Willcox Smith, andElizabeth Shippen Green.[12] Many of the women who founded the organization had been students of Howard Pyle. It was founded to provide a means to encourage one another professionally and create opportunities to sell their works of art.[12][13]
In 1916, Oakley’s life partner,Edith Emerson, moved into Oakley's Mount Airy home, Cogslea. Emerson was also a painter and, at one time, a student of Oakley's. Emerson and Oakley's relationship endured until Oakley's death and Emerson subsequently established a foundation to memorialize Oakley's life and legacy. The foundation dissolved in 1988 and it's records were donated to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.[14]
On June 14, 2014, Oakley was featured in the first gay-themed tour ofGreen-Wood Cemetery inBrooklyn, New York City, where she is interred in the Oakley family plot, Section 63, Lot 14788.[15][16]
As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman".[17]
Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives." In the late 19th-century and early 20th century about 88% of the subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depict the world through a woman's perspective. Other successful illustrators wereJennie Augusta Brownscombe,Jessie Wilcox Smith,Rose O'Neill, andElizabeth Shippen Green.[18]
Her teacherHoward Pyle recommended Oakley and fellow artistJessie Wilcox Smith for their first important commission, a series of illustrations for Longfellow'sEvangeline, that was published in 1897, numerous commissions followed.[21]
Oakley painted a series of 43 murals in thePennsylvania State Capitol Building inHarrisburg for the Governors Grand Reception Room, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Oakley was originally commissioned in 1902 only for the murals in the Governor's Grand Reception Room, which she titled "The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual." In the reception room murals, Oakley depicts the story ofWilliam Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania. She conducted extensive research on the subject, even traveling to England. The series of murals were unveiled in the new Capitol Building in November 1906, shortly after the dedication of the building. WhenEdwin Austin Abbey died in 1911, Violet Oakley was offered the job of creating the murals for the Senate and Supreme Court Chambers, a 16-year project.[22]
Oakley's other work includes:
Two murals and stained glass work forAll Angels Church, New York City, her first commission, 1900[23]
The Great Wonder: A Vision of the Apocalypse (1924) triptych for the living room of the Alumnae House atVassar College[26][27]
Eighteen mural panels onThe Building of the House of Wisdom and stained glass dome for the Charlton Yarnell House, 1910, at 17th and Locust Street in Philadelphia (three lunettes,The Child and Tradition,[28]Youth and the Arts,[29] andMan and Science[30] were removed and in collection ofWoodmere Art Museum).
Great Women of the Bible murals, First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, 1945–1949[31]
The Holy Experiment: A message to the World from Pennsylvania, published by the author in a limited edition of 1000, an Elephant Folio with 26 lithographic plates of the artist's mural work at the Senate Chambers, with text by the artist/author.[33]
Life of Moses, commissioned bySamuel S. Fleisher in 1927, remains today as the altar piece for the Sanctuary of theFleisher Art Memorial on Catharine Street in Philadelphia. It is dedicated to Fleisher's mother, Cecilia[sic] Hofheimer Fleisher and inscribed from Exodus 2: 'And the child grew and he became her song...' Oakley created the work while on sojourn in Italy, staying at a villa outside Florence.[34]
TheDivine Comedy window commissioned in 1910 byRobert J. Collier for his townhouse in Manhattan;c. 1918 gifted to theApostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C.[35] The window is divided into three sections, one for eachcantiche inDante'spoem, with four medallions each. TheInferno section is read from top to bottom, reflecting Dante's descent through Hell. ThePurgatorio andParadiso sections are read from bottom to top, reflecting Dante's journey from Hell to Paradise.[36]
Lehigh University Professor Francis Quirk organized an exhibit of her work that opened with a reception for 500 people in 1950.[37]
Violet Oakley's first major retrospective was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1979.[38]
TheWoodmere Art Museum staged a major exhibit of Oakley's work from September 2017 to January 2018. In January 2020 the museum launched The Violet Oakley Experience, a digital resource that organizes and presents over 3,000 works of art by Violet Oakley in Woodmere's collection.
^Stryker, Catherine Connell (1976).The Studios at Cogslea. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum. p. 30.
^Williams, Michael (1915).A Brief Guide to the Department of Fine Arts Panama-Pacific International Exposition San Francisco, California, 1915. San Francisco: The Wahlgreen Company. p. 64.
^Carter, Alice A. (2000).The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. pp. 46–47.
^Van Hook, Bailey (2016).Violet Oakley: An Artist's Life. Lanham, Maryland: University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press. p. 373.ISBN978-1-61149-585-0.
Patricia Likos Ricci (2017) A Grand Vision: Violet Oakley and the American Renaissance, exhibition catalog, Woodmere Art Museum, September 30, 2017 – January 21, 2018.
Patricia Likos Ricci: "Violet Oakley, American Renaissance Woman", The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. cxxvi, No.2 (April 2002).
Rowland Elzea and Elizabeth H. Hawkes (1980). A Small School of Art: The Students of Howard Pyle, Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum
Violet Oakley (1950).The Holy Experiment, Our Heritage from William Penn: Series of Mural Paintings in the Governor's Reception Room, in the Senate Chamber and in the Supreme Courtroom of the State Capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Cogslea Studio Publications (limited edition, one thousand copies, hand-numbered by the author)
Sheets, Georg R (2002).A Sacred Challenge; Violet Oakley and the Pennsylvania Capital Murals. Harrisburg: Capitol Preservation Committee.ISBN0-9643048-6-4.
Van Hook, Bailey (2016).Violet Oakley: An Artist's Life. Newark DE: University of Delaware Press.ISBN978-1611495850.
