Women in History Celebration March 28th

Drawing connections:
Unfamiliar names illustrate the need for HERstory

By Christine Goldbeck, MFA-IA
Owner of Arts on Union

The names Jessie Willcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green illustrate the need to set aside time to celebrate Pennsylvania’s historic women during National Women’s History Month.

Smith and Green were two of the renowned trio known as “The Red Rose Girls.” The third, Violet Oakley, is a name better known today because her work – 43 murals – beautifies the Senate, the Governor’s Reception Room and the Supreme Court the State Capitol in Harrisburg. Oakley was among the first American women artists to receive a public art commission.

Smith, Green and Oakley met at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later studied under Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute. Pyle gave the trio the nickname “Red Rose Girls” because the three established a collaborative home and studio at the Red Rose Inn in Villanova. This, of course, was an uncommon and most un-Victorian, lifestyle for three, unmarried women.

Oakley and Smith collaborated on the illustrations for the 1897edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline. In the early 1900s, Smith and Green collaborated on the Bryn Mawr College Calendar and on The Book of the Child.

Like Oakley, Smith and Green also worked on their own projects. Elliott published in Harper's, St. Nicholas, Women's Home Companion, the Saturday Evening Post and many other magazines. In addition to doing work for Ladies' Home Journal, Scribner's Magazine, and Good Housekeeping, Smith did the illustrations for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.
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Women in History Celebration - March 28th -Arts on Union Gallery & Studio!

Oil, acrylic, watercolor, encaustic and mixed-media paintings, photographs, jewelry, notecards and glass art are in this exhibit. Several of the MMCA Marketplace Artists are also included , so if you did not have the chance to drop by last month, you can still see some of this remarkable work. Stop in on Saturday, March 28th from noon to five when several of the artists will be on hand to talk about their work. Enjoy refreshments and enter to win original art.