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Violet Oakley Collected Papers
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Held at: Swarthmore College Peace Collection [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore 19081-1399
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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Violet Oakley (1874-1961) was a Philadelphia-area artist who had been educated both in Europe and the United States. She was a student of Howard Pyle of the Brandywine School. Her works included heroic murals found in the Pennsylvania governor's mansion and in the State Capitol, featuring William Penn and the Quaker founding of the Commonwealth. She was also a portraitist, her sketch of Jane Addams being featured on the memorial calendar to Addams in 1943 published by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The League's fortieth anniversary in 1955 inspired Oakley to publish Cathedral of Compassion: Dramatic Outline of the Life of Jane Addams, 1860-1935. Oakley's artist companion of many decades, Edith Emerson, was instrumental in mounting an Oakley revival as an exhibition in 1979 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is not the official repository for the papers of this individual.
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