Violet Oakley studied at the Art Students’ League in New York. Then she spent two years in Paris studying under Aman Jean and Charles Lazar. When she returned to America, Oakley attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts and was taught by Cecilia Beaux. Then she studied at the Drexel Institute with Howard Pyle.
One of her first commissions was to illustrate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline, a project she collaborated on with Jessie Wilcox Smith.
A 1915 article in The Boston Globe said that after completing that project, Oakley formed a “triple alliance pact” with Jessie Wilcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green, vowing to remain bachelor maids and dedicate their lives to art. They rented “an old-time inn, known as The Red Rose, at Villanova, not far from Bryn Mawr.”
Unfortunately, Elizabeth Shippen Green quickly broke the vow and married Hager Eliot. Then, Violet Oakley moved her studio to Cogslea, her home in a suburb of Philadelphia.
She painted two murals for All Angels Church in New York in 1900. After that, she created a series of 43 murals for the new Pennsylvania Capitol at Harrisburg. And then, after the death of Edwin A. Abbey, Oakley was asked to finish the murals for the Pennsylvania Senate and Supreme Court chambers.
The Tucson Citizen said, “the canvasses were so large (12 x 8 1/2 feet) that she had to build a special studio, and elaborate scaffolding was erected on which she stands and works daily for many hours.”
Her illustrations appeared in Century Magazine, Collier’s, St. Nicholas, and Woman’s Home Companion. In addition, several magazines featured stories and illustrations detailing her murals for the Pennsylvania State House.
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