The Red Rose Girls: The Academy Centennial

"Self-Portrait" by Violet Oakley

"Kept In" by Jessie Willcox Smith

"Giséle" by Elizabeth Shippen Green

"The date is Thursday, February 23, 1905. Teddy Roosevelt is about to be inaugurated for a second term. It costs $150 a year to attend Harvard University, a standard Oldsmobile Runabout may be purchased for $650 and a house for $2,000. Women will not vote in national elections for another fifteen years.

On this particular night Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley leave their communal residence for a banquet celebrating the centennial exhibition of the nation's oldest art institution, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Forty-one-year-old Jessie Smith, the oldest of the trio, approaches the evening with her status at the Academy already assured. At the 1903 exhibition she had garnered the institution's prestigious Mary Smith Prize for the best painting by a woman and is firmly established as one of the nation's foremost illustrators. Elizabeth Shippen Green, thirty-three, is also at the top of her career. The only woman under contract with 'Harper's' magazine, she will be awarded the 1905 Mary Smith Prize within the week. The youngest, thirty-year-old Violet Oakley, enjoys a national reputation as an illustrator and muralist.

Speeches are made, toasts given. The prizes are last, after coffee and cigars. Sculptor Alexander Calder is awarded the Lippincott Prize. The Temple Gold Medal goes to marine painter William Trost Richards. Then a surprise announcement: a special gold medal in honor of the Academy's centennial is awarded to the illustrator Violet Oakley. She is the youngest person ever to receive the award. The hall erupts in applause, and Violet is pelted with rose petals and carnation blossoms. Jessie and Elizabeth join the standing ovation.

After the banquet, the three women return in triumph to their leased estate in Villanova: the beautiful and elegant Red Rose Inn. Awaiting their arrival is the woman behind the women: the fourth member of the household, Henrietta Cozens. She was not a working artist, yet her assistance is invaluable. She manages the estate, tends the gardens, even knits the nightcaps. It was this unconventional living arrangement that freed Smith, Green and Oakley simultaneously from both the domestic responsibilities and the artistic isolation that still inhibit many capable artists. Together they are known as 'The Red Rose Girls.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls" An Uncommon Story of Art and Love" by Alice A. Carter.)