The Red Rose Girls: Jessie Excels

"Summer's Passing" by Jessie Willcox Smith

"Hailed as America's Kate Greenaway, there was a constant demand for Jessie Willcox Smith's work. The comparison with Greenaway, the English illustrator whose charming images of impeccable children adorned British children's books at the end of the nineteenth century, pleased her. She never expressed any regret about her choice of subject matter nor seemed to feel that children's book illustration was any less important than the allegorical murals that Violet Oakley constructed. Nor did she make any self-deprecating remarks about the sentimental nature of her paintings.

Despite her great financial success, Smith's work was drive by conviction, not by money. Although her even temper and noticeable lack of the sort of artistic zeal that drove Violet occasionally caused her to mention that perhaps she was not a 'real' artist, she was dedicated to her profession and continued to work prodigiously even though it had been many years since there had been any pressing financial need. Her illustrations were tremendously popular, but a friend once wrote, 'Only a few know that they represent - a steady devotion to work - a continuous effort, generously and unselfishly poured out that others may rejoice and be glad.'

After returning from a trip to England, Smith illustrated two critically acclaimed books in quick succession: 'Dream Blocks,' published in 1908, and 'The Seven Ages of Childhood,' published in 1909. Between them, the two books had twenty-three full-page color illustrations. She was also busy with magazine illustrations for 'Collier's,' 'Ladies' Home Journal,' 'McClure's Magazine,' and 'Woman's Home Companion.'

In 1907 the New York Society of Illustrators, recognizing the excellence of women in the field, elected their first five female members. Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley joined Florence Schovel Shinn and May Wilson in the select group."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

 

The Red Rose Girls: Huger Elliott

"He Was Not Much Given to Reading" by Elizabeth Green

"Violet Oakley did not have to wait too long for her next large commission. Not only was she well known, but she now had influential friends. The hospitable Woodwards often invited them to their nearby home, where the three women were embraced into a lively and elite social circle. Frank Miles Day, the architect who had restored Cogslea, was also a frequent guest and soon became a friend of all three, as well as an ardent admirer of Oakley's work. When Day was chosen to design an elaborate residence with a Renaissance-inspired dome-shaped, stained-glass window, three lunettes, four pendentives, and six octagonal murals for insets, he offered her the commission to decorate the spaces.

With Violet once again placated and happy, the household seemed to revert to the pleasant camaraderie of the Red Rose days. Life was lively and convivial. Of necessity, work ended earlier in the winter months when the light faded. All three artists depended heavily on natural light to control the color of their paintings. Winter evenings were spent around the fire and the piano, talking, singing, reading aloud, and entertaining guests.

The Woodwards were frequent visitors and one day brought a new acquaintance with them. Huger (pronouned 'U-gee') Elliott was a charming and erudite young architect who had recently been persuaded to entertain a select group of the Woodward's friends with a series of lectures on architecture. Smith, Green, and Oakley enjoyed the talks. In fact, Elizabeth Green found the young architect charming. Huger was a good-looking, dark-haired young man with a mustache and classically handsome features - and he began to turn up with regularity in Green's illustrations. He shared her lively wit, her love of nonsense verse, and her jovial personality. He became a fixture at gatherings at Cogslea and was a welcome guest - even after he asked Elizabeth to marry him. 

Her official excuse for prolonging the engagement was the condition of her elderly parents. She told Huger she did not wish to burden him with the expense of their care. He was willing to wait, however, and the problem was defused when he accepted a position to teach at Harvard. At the end of the summer he would be moving to Cambridge, and Elizabeth would be staying with her friends."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

The Red Rose Girls: Alphonse Mucha

"The Child and Tradition" by Violet Oakley

"Cogslea was in easy walking distance of the Allen's Lane train station, and Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley took advantage of their proximity to convenient transportation and started going into Philadelphia frequently. Even Violet, who was making good progress on the Harrisburg panels was ready to go out and have some fun.

When the great Alphonse Mucha, icon of the French Art Nouveau movement, was sponsored by the Plastic Club to speak at Witherspoon Hall in Philadelphia, they were in the audience. Mucha, who spoke no English, lectured with the aid of an interpreter. In high spirits, Violet commemorated the occasion to amuse Henrietta who, as usual, stayed home.

'Mr. Mucha says: Vat is Arrt? It is bewtee. The pairson who is onable to comprehend the mor-r-ral ar-r-monies in onable to comprehend feesicle ar-r-monies. The Amer-rican landscape is a r-rich if not r-richer than the Eur-r-ropean landscape. In composition everything should be in proportion of two to three. If not, we say it is ogly - illustrates on blackboard - then it is bewtee. Vat is bewtee? It is the manifestation of mor-ral ar-rmony (develops the 2 to 3 formula.'

In 1906 after four years of concentrated effort, Violet finished the murals for the Governor's Reception Room. On November 23 the lights burned all night in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg as Violet, forfeiting any sleep at all, supervised the workmen hired to install the panels. They finished at 6 a.m., just as the crowds started to arrive fort he ceremonies. The governor, Samuel Pennypacker, who reached his office early in the morning, was surprised to see thousands already assembled. 

When the paintings were unveiling, Pennypacker was as pleased with the murals as any of the citizens. The critics were kind too, and Violet was elated with the subsequent acclaim, which secured her a place as an important member of the American Renaissance Revival movement. The former managing director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, praised her great achievement: "Miss Oakley's work precisely resembles the better achievements of the Venetian School... This great achievement will grow with every year it is seen and studied. In it there has been depicted what is unquestionably rare in modern art - a genuine spiritual conviction.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

The Red Rose Girls: Cogslea

The Garden Fountain at Cogslea

"In August of 1905, after several months of secret negotiations, H. S. Kerbaugh, purchased the Red Rose Inn and two hundred surrounding acres for $200,000. In January, Violet Oakley, Jessie Smith, Elizabeth Green and Henrietta Cozens were served with an eviction notice stating: 'Each of you are hereby notified and required to quit and deliver up to me possession of the said premises, which you now hold as tenant under me, at the expiration of the said lease, namely, the first day of May, A.D. 1906, as I desire to have such possession.'

The eviction notice caught the Red Rose Girls completely off guard. Later, friends would tell them that so many people advised Henry Kerbaugh not to disturb his famous tenants, that he lost his temper and shouted, 'I don't want any beggarly artists on the place!' His decision to turn them out put the household in turmoil. What were they to do?

Help came from one of Philadelphia's wealthiest citizens, Dr. George Woodward. After much discussion, Woodward agreed to renovate a partially burnt-out house located on his property near the picturesque Cresheim Creek. The old house had thick stone walls and an adjacent barn and carriage house that could serve as studio space. He hired the noted architect Frank Miles Day to make the necessary improvements. George Walter Dawson was engaged to lay out the gardens, which the artists stipulated should, as closely as possible, duplicate the grounds at their beloved Red Rose Inn - complete with the fountain, distinctive pergola, clematis and red roses. The extraordinary generosity of the Woodward family mitigated the artists' distress over leaving their home, and the four companions were able to relocated with minimal interruption of their busy schedules. 

They named their new home Cogslea, keeping the acronym they had devised for their eccentric family and adding 'lea' for the sloping land of the new estate. They were forever grateful for the generosity of the Woodward family and affectionately called their benefactor St. George. The name stuck, and although the original address for Cogslea was Allen's Lane, the present address of the home (now a national historic site) is St. George's Road."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

The Red Rose Girls: Murals at the Pennsylvania Capitol, Pt. 2

"Penn's Examination in the Tower of London"
by Violet Oakley

"When Violet Oakley returned from Europe, she began to work in earnest on the murals for the Governor's Reception Room at the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in Harrisburg. She called the series, 'The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual.' There were to be eighteen horizontal panels, all six feet in height, the longest panel measuring nineteen feet. She composed a narrative beginning with the events in Europe that led to William Penn's vision of religious freedom in a peaceful, unarmed state, and ending with his first sight of the shores of Pennsylvania.

 Violet felt the realization of Penn's dream was imminent and would devote much of her life to pursuing his hope for international disarmament, harmony and understanding. She worked productively, completing six panels and a study for the seventh, which she submitted to the jury at the Pennsylvania Academy's 100th anniversary exhibition. All her hard work, the long hours in the studio, and the costly research trip to Europe were rewarded by the Academy's gold medal. 

However, three of her panels on display led to serious controversy. As part of her narrative they showed the vehement opposition of the Catholic Church to William Tyndal's translation of the Bible into English in 1525, which ended in his strangulation at the stake with his corpse being burned. The president of the American Catholic Historical Society wrote a long letter to the governor contending that the subject matter was 'irrelevant' and 'inappropriate' for the new State Capitol, and that it would be impolitic to install them.

An upset Violet explained that in order to understand William Penn's motivations for leaving his native land, it was necessary to understand the magnitude of the religious intolerance that existed in England. She noted that the rest of paintings in the series would tell a different story. When the sequence was concluded the public would understand 'the beauty of tolerance, versus the darkness of intolerance.' In the newspaper accounts she sounded confident, well-informed, and mature beyond her thirty-one years. 

Still, she must have been terribly worried. She had only a year left on the project. Most of the money due for the paintings was already spent. She needed critical acclaim to secure her next commission. The press reported that the governor sustained 'the historic accuracy of the paintings and their fitness for decorations in Pennsylvania's Capitol,' but he made no public statement on the subject at all."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

The Red Rose Girls: Preparing for the Harrisburg Murals

 

"The Vision of St. Augustine" by Vittore Carpaccio

"In 1902, the state of Pennsylvania was engaged in building a new State Capitol building, to replace the previous edifice, destroyed in a disastrous fire. The architect saw it not only as a place to conduct the business of the commonwealth but also as a museum to applaud the history and contributions of the citizenry. When Violet Oakley's work was brought to his attention, he decided to take a chance on the talents of the young artist and commissioned her to paint eighteen murals for the Governor's Reception Room. Although the majority of the murals were assigned to the well-known illustrator and muralist Edwin Austin Abbey, the eighteen paintings for the Reception Room constituted a sizable task. It was the first time an American woman artist had received such a prestigious assignment. Violet was offered $20,000 for the project, which would take her four years to complete. She accepted $5,000 immediately as an advance against expenses. 

Never judicious with her money or adept at making long-range financial palns, the sum seemed inexhaustible to her. In preparation for the job, she sailed for England in March 1903, inviting her mother to accompany her. When she arrived in England, Violet set to work exhaustively researching the life of William Penn. She also spent time in London's museums and galleries and gained artistic inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.  During the summer of 1903, she traveled to Rome, Florence, Venice, Assisi, Perugia, and Siena, studying mural painting techniques and analyzing the works of the Italian masters. In Venice she discover the mural paintings of Carpaccio in the Church of San Giorgio degli Schivoni and found inspiration for her own project.

The trip was Violet's first time away from her friends in five years. As the weeks went on, she missed her companions and begged for some word but received nothing from them. The truth was that her fellow 'Red Roses' had not forgotten her, they were just occupied with their own work and the management of their extensive property. In September she concluded her studies and boarded the the Royal Mail Steamship 'Umbria' for the return voyage. She wrote her friends: 'I want every single one of you to be there - so please let me know... I wish I could be surprised by a line of Red Roses on the dock.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)

The Red Rose Girls: The "Cogs"

"The Red Roses: Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley,
Jessie Willcox Smith and Henrietta Cozens

"As the ties between the women intensified, they began to refer to each other as sisters and to call each other by pet names. Jessie Smith became Jeddy, Elizabeth Green, Liddy, and Henrietta Cozens, Heddy. They tried out Viddy, for Violet, but somehow a diminutive did not mesh with her solemn personality and increasingly volatile temper. She preferred 'Violet, Duchess of Oaks.' The four women also chose a common surname, dubbing themselves the 'Cogs' family: 'C' for Cozens, 'O' for Oakley, 'G' for Green, and 'S' for Smith. Their teacher and mentor Howard Pyle called them the 'Red Rose Girls.'

1902 brought several honors to the household. The Plastic Club Exhibition Committee offered them a three-woman show. Jessie Smith managed to accumulate an impressive group of thirty illustrations. Advertising work for Procter & Gamble shared space with book illustrations, numerous magazine illustrations, and the designs for the Bryn Mawr calendar. Elizabeth Green contributed her calendar illustrations, as well as magazine illustrations. Violet Oakley exhibited two covers for 'Collier's Weekly,' some charcoal drawings, and her designs for the All Angels' stained-glass windows and chancel decorations. The show lasted from February third to the fifteenth and garnered favorable reviews from the local press, which noted that, even though they lived and worked together, the three friends maintained their artistic integrity. As noted: 'In illustration Miss Green shows possibly the most originality, Miss Smith the finest finish and Miss Oakley the strongest decorative sense.'

The success of the exhibition was an important step in the careers of all three artists, but it was the move to the Red Rose Inn that filled them with optimism. Photographs taken just prior to the move capture their high spirits. In one staged tableau, the four women sit around a table covered with beer mugs and wine bottles and hold up glasses filled with milk. In another the three artists, wearing the smocks they used for painting, are posed in front of Violet's poster design for the Plastic Club exhibition. Each grasps a long-stemmed red rose as Henrietta Cozens, holding a fourth rose, raises a watering can over her friends' heads."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)