The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love., Elizabeth Shippen Green , and Violet Oakley

"... In order to be viewed as serious professional artists, these women chose to forego the very domestic life they so romantically portrayed. "

TWENTY-THREE YEARS before American women won the right to vote in national elections, illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935), Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1954), and Violet Oakley (1874-1961) established a unique communal household based on professional cooperation and personal affection. The three artists met in 1897 when they were all studying with Howard Pyle, the nation's most celebrated illustrator. It was Pyle who noted a similarity in the work of Smith and Oakley and recommended that they collaborate on a professional assignment. To expedite the project, Smith moved into Oakley's studio in downtown Philadelphia. Green soon joined them.

The tale of the Red Rose Girls is set against the backdrop of late-Victorian-era mores and the emerging women's rights movement. The trio were professional artists at a time when it was more common for women to take art classes as a symbol of social accomplishment rather than as a serious endeavor. They studied at the renowned Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and met as students in Pyle's illustration class at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia.

Pyle provided specialized training in the practical and aesthetic aspects of illustration, encouraging his female students to take their careers seriously. This was unusual for the time, as they were prohibited from studying life drawing in most art schools and typically studied art in segregated classes. Only those who were extremely determined made their way in the male-dominated art world. Illustration, however, was considered an acceptable career for women because the creation of images for children's books and the newly burgeoning field of magazines were deemed an extension of women's "natural" talents for decorating and child rearing.

In 1901, Smith, Green, and Oakley established a home and studio in the picturesque Red Rose Inn on Philadelphia's venerable Main Line. There, they frequently posed for one another, offered sympathetic, constructive criticism, and enjoyed an easy exchange of ideas. Their delightful paintings and drawings celebrated the joys of domestic life in secure and happy images that fed the fantasies and aspirations of middle class society.

"These women were considered the most influential artists of American domestic life at the turn of the 20th century. Celebrated in their day, their poetic, idealized images still prevail as archetypes of motherhood and childhood a century later," says Laurie Norton Moffatt, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Faced with the daunting prospect of managing their new property, however, they enlisted the help of their friend Henrietta Cozens, who had no artistic ambition but was eager to shoulder the domestic responsibilities. Nevertheless, the financial obligations of maintaining the household were considerable and necessitated a binding commitment. So the four women made a heartfelt promise to stay together forever. They adopted a common surname, christening themselves the Cogs family--C for Cozens, O for Oakley, G for Green, and S for Smith. Pyle called them the Red Rose Girls.

Ironically, in order to be viewed as serious professional artists, these women chose to forego the very domestic life they so romantically portrayed. Committed to remaining single and childless, they made a home together and relied on the support and domestic work of Cozens to sustain their prolific careers. Exhibition curator Alice Carter notes, "In her 1929 essay, 'A Room of One's Own,' Virginia Woolf discussed why women authors failed to excel and devised a formula to rectify the situation. Women could achieve eminence, she contended, if given equal educational opportunity, financial independence, and privacy. Had ... Woolf known about these three intrepid American illustrators, she might have revised her specifications to include the opportunity to collaborate."

Their unconventional alliance enabled Smith, Green, and Oakley to establish national reputations as artists, while maintaining both the punishing work schedule necessary in a competitive field and the genteel lifestyle that was the hallmark of a successful woman in the early 20th century.

Smith and Green were among the most renowned illustrators of their time, creating unforgettable imagery for children's books and the period's trend-setting periodicals, including Scribner's, Collier's, and Harper's Monthly Magazine. Smith, who was famous for her heartfelt depictions of mothers and children, executed nearly 200 covers for Good Housekeeping, and her exquisite representations of children in Charles Kingsley's Water Babies and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses continue to be well known. Oakley was a painter, muralist, and stained glass artist of national reputation. She was awarded the gold Medal of Honor by the Pennsylvania Academy in 1905 and was among the first American women to be granted important public commissions, including a series of heroic murals for the Pennsylvania State Capitol.

The alliance among the Red Rose Girls lasted for 14 year's, flourishing in an atmosphere of cooperation, collaboration, and love, until a proposal of marriage forced Green to make a painful choice. When she left the household, it caused a breach that never fully mended. Although all three artists continued to be productive, after the breakup their work did not so much decline as fail to move forward. Although they all lived well into the 20th century, they never cut their hair, shortened their skirts, learned to drive, or embraced the sweeping artistic changes that characterized the new era. They had no sympathy for the candor of modernism and remained romantics looking back with longing to the heady days when in love with life, art, and one another.

"The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love" is a major retrospective of the artists' works and draws on more than 100 original oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, archival photographs, books and magazine tear sheets that tell a vibrant story of three extraordinary lives. Many of the paintings--on loan from public and private collections across the nation--rarely have been seen and some have never before been on public view. The exhibition can be seen at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., through May 31.

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