The Women of The Brandywine – Violet Oakley (1874-1961)
The Brandywine Valley, which sweeps from southeasten Pennsylvania into northern Delaware, fostered a wealth of talent at the turn of the 20th century. Howard Pyle, known as “the Father of American Illustration” was beginning his own artistic movement and school in this rural area of the East Coast. Pyle’s romantic imagery in his work was passed on to his female students whom he taught with total equality. But, by default of their sexually segregated times, women were denied access to their contemporaries’ fraternal discussions, where ideas and techniques were exchanged. This caused a separate and similarly closeknit sorority to grow among these women artists. The Brandywine’s “softer sexed” artists were both eccentric and inspired and their effects on one another’s work retains all the raw American stamina instilled by Pyle, but it is also notably gracious and graceful, in both content and execution. Among the female students who were to become the Brandywine women artists were; Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Alice Barber Stephens, Ethel Franklin Betts and Anna Whalen Betts.