The Plastic Club: Advancing Women Artists for 125 Years

Posted by on Dec 15, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Plastic Club: Advancing Women Artists for 125 Years In 1898 The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America noted an unusual development in Pennsylvania. “There are in America many clubs for the furtherance of art interests — painters’ clubs, sculptors’ clubs, illustrators’ clubs — from which women are excluded. Philadelphia possesses an art club that excludes men. The Plastic Club, formed in the spring of 1897, has on its list of one hundred...
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To Form a More Perfect Union: Violet Oakley’s Murals in the Pennsylvania Senate Chamber

Posted by on Apr 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on To Form a More Perfect Union: Violet Oakley’s Murals in the Pennsylvania Senate Chamber At breakfast tables on Sunday morning, December 3, 1911, readers of The New York Times were confronted with a surprising headline running across the magazine section: “A WOMAN CHOSEN TO COMPLETE THE ABBEY PAINTINGS.” Four months earlier, the news that the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) had passed away in London raised speculation about who would receive the remainder of his...
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Violet Oakley, Lady Mural Painter

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Violet Oakley, Lady Mural Painter When Violet Oak­ley accepted the commission – and challenge – of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to decorate the State Capitol then under con­struction in Harrisburg, she announced that the subject of her mural series would be “The Romance of the Found­ing of the State.” In 1902, the ardent lady mural painter, then twenty-eight years old and the only one of her kind,...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love By Alice A. Carter Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000 (216 pages, cloth, $39.95) Highly successful and immensely unconventional Philadelphia artists Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935), Eliza­beth Shippen Green (1871-1954), and Violet Oakley (1874-1961) captivated early twentieth-century society with their brilliant careers and uncommon lifestyle. At a...
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