The Red Rose Girls: Violet's Crisis of Confidence

Violet Oakley at work on "Unity"

"Because Violet Oakley was awarded the new contract for the Capitol of the state of Pennsylvania on the basis of the success of her designs for the Governor's Reception Room, it is hardly surprising that she decided to 'pick up the threads' of her original assignment. The new series would begin with the philosophy of the Quakers - moral precepts on which the State was founded. Then she moved on effortlessly to create conceptual sketches for the main wall. Revolutionary troops, Civil War soldiers, George Washington at the Constitutional Convention, a solemn Abraham Lincoln delivering his famous address at Gettysburg. However, much to her dismay, a theme for the largest panel - nine feet high and forty-four feet long - eluded her.

She finally conceived a theme: an immense and powerful-looking female allegorical figure representing the unity of all life, painted in shades of blue, a color that she felt symbolized wisdom. In the midst of this inspired vision Violet suddenly lost all confidence in her ability while on a trip to London: 

'And when I thought of that central figure of Unity, I was appalled and tried to make another composition, and it wouldn't come. And I had to go back to that, because there had to be that great, strong, enormous figure as a keystone to hold all the different parts of the thing in the room together.

And I remember being quite dashed and one day going round - it was a rainy, windy day - and I went round, and I thought that the Thames River looked like a rather good place to jump when you knew you couldn't carry out what you'd been asked to do.

I stumbled down to the National Gallery, and with difficulty, climbed up all those steps,
got into the central hall and dropped upon a bench in the center. And I looked up and saw a beautiful Italian painting. An early painting by Orcagna. And I suddenly realized that time had nothing to do with art. It was a question of whether it was good enough at any time or age. That art was not for time, not for an age but for all time - that it was the expression of eternal qualities of beauty and harmony. And I was immediately healed. So I always think of that room in the National Gallery as where I was healed and where I was then to take up the theme and develop it.'

That day in the bleak London rain, when Violet decided not to throw herself into the Thames, became a turning point - a line of demarcation between her fourteen-year association with the Cogs family and a new independent life."

To be continued

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