Violet Oakley

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Violet Oakley

Born	June 10, 1874
Died	February 25, 1961 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Field	Painting, murals, stained glass
Movement	Pre-Raphaelite influence
Famous works	Pennsylvania State Capital murals

Violet Oakley (June 10, 1874 to February 25, 1961) was an American artist known for her murals and her work in stained glass. She was a student and later a faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Oakley was born in Bergen Heights, New Jersey into a family of artists. She studied at the Art Student's League in New York and later with Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute. Oakley was greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. Oakley painted a series of 43 murals in the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building in Harrisburg for the Governors Grand Reception Room, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Oakley was originally commissioned only for the murals in the Governor's Grand Reception Room. When Edwin Austin Abbey passed away in 1911, Violet Oakley was offered the job of creating the murals for the Senate and Supreme Court Chambers.

She received many honors through her life including an honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree in 1948 from Drexel Institute. Oakley was a pacifist, feminist and socialist and strived to reflect her belief in a better world through her work.

Oakley and her two friends, the artists Elizabeth Shippen Green and Jessie Willcox Smith, were named the Red Rose girls by Pyle. The three illustrators received the "Red Rose Girls" nickname while they lived together in the Red Rose Inn in Villanova, Pennsylvania from 1899 to 1901. They later lived, along with Henrietta Cozens, in a home in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia that they named Cogslea after their four surnames (Cozens, Oakley, Green and Smith).