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.)