The Red Rose Girls: Fight On!

"Fairies at the Lily Pond"
by Jessie Willcox Smith

"Jessie Smith and Henrietta Cozens moved into Cogshill, their new home, in 1914, thus ending what had been an outstandingly successful artistic collaboration. Although the Red Rose Girls eventually reestablished their friendship, the guidance and inspiration they derived from one another ended. When their alliance was severed, their work did not so much decline as fail to move forward. Revolutionary changes, which they refused to acknowledge, were taking place in the art world. Although they were aware that their work was considered old-fashioned, there was still a market for it. In a letter, Violet addressed the subject and outlined the philosophy that sustained her for the rest of her life: hold steadfastly to your beliefs - and do not give up the fight!

Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliott, and Violet Oakley did not give up the fight. Although they all lived well into the twentieth century, they never cut their hair, shortened their skirts, learned to drive, or embraced any of the changes taking place in the art world or in society. Edna Andrade remembers being a member of the receiving line at one of the Academy Fellowship shows in the early 1950s. Looking down the line at the other artists, one of the group noticed that they were a shabby lot. 'Don't worry,' one of them remarked, 'we'll all look a lot better when Violet gets here.' Indeed, Violet was majestic. Artist and historian Ben Eisentat also remembers Oakley at the Academy openings cutting an impressive swath through the crowd in her long Victorian-style gown, looking like she was 'dressed in the living room curtains.'

The Red Rose Girls embraced the nineteenth-century aesthetic of sentiment and narrative and never understood the twentieth-century's preoccupation with stream of consciousness or abstraction. They all admired the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as Abbott Thayer, George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, the landscapes of John Twachtman, the stylized murals of Elihu Vedder, the works of John La Farge and Edwin Austin Abbey, and the writings of Shakespeare, Henry James, Dickens, and the Romantic poets. The Realist school, although more palatable to them than modernism, celebrated American life as it was and scoffed at the idealized images of the previous century. The Red Rose Girls had built their lives around romance not realism."

To be continued

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