The Red Rose Girls: The Final Chapter

"The Picture Book" by Jessie Willcox Smith

"Amid trouble and crisis, Violet Oakley and Edith Emerson remained devoted companions. Edith was not an idle partner and helped financially as much as possible. She was an accomplished and prolific painter of some note and also designed murals, stained glass, illustrations, and bookplates. She taught in the Philadelphia area at the Agnes Irwin School, The Museum School of Industrial Arts, and at Chestnut Hill College. Beginning in 1940 she was successively vice president, president, and curator of the Woodmere Art Gallery in Chestnut Hill. 

After Oakley's death in 1961, Emerson found it impossible to abandon her close connection to the ethics of her beloved comrade. In order to disseminate Violet's message, she established the Violet Oakley Memorial Foundation, an organization dedicated to keeping her friend's memory and ideals alive. The elderly membership consisted mainly of longtime friends, former students of the Cogslea Academy, and amateur painters who were upset by Abstract Expressionism and found solace in Oakley's didactic work. Several years after Edith died on November 21, 1981, at the age of ninety-three, the Violet Oakley Foundation was dissolved, and Lower Cogslea sold. Although the hedges grew tall, the clematis bloomed in September, and roses still opened in the bright Mt. Airy summer, the last beneficiary of the Red Rose legacy was gone.

Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley knew the value of an artistic community, of honest and informed criticism by their peers, and of the company of compatible friends. By the close of the twentieth century, 106 eminent artists were honored with inclusion into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame: ninety-seven men and nine women, three of whom were our Red Rose Girls."

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