Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
History
Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
Women artists -- Biography
In the summer of 1903 she was commissioned to decorate the walls of the
Governor's reception room in the new Capitol at Harrisburg. Before
engaging in this work--the first of its kind to be confided to an
American woman--Miss Oakley went to Italy to study mural painting. She
then went to England to thoroughly inform herself concerning the
historical foundation of her subject, the history of the earliest days of
Pennsylvania. At Oxford and in London she found what she required, and on
her return to America established herself in a studio in Villa Nova,
Pennsylvania, to make her designs for "The Romance of the Founding of the
State," which is to be painted on a frieze five feet deep. The room is
seventy by thirty feet, and sixteen feet in height.
The decoration of this Capitol is to be more elaborate and costly than
that of any other public edifice in the United States. In mural
decoration Miss Oakley will be associated with Edwin A. Abbey, but the
Governor's room is to be her work entirely, and will doubtless occupy her
during several years.
Mr Charles A. Caffin, in his article upon the exhibition of the New York
Water-Color Club, January, 1904, says: "Miss Oakley has had considerable
experience in designing stained-glass windows, and has reproduced in some
of her designs for book covers a corresponding treatment of the
composition, with an attempt, not very logical or desirable, considering
the differences between paint and glass, to reproduce also something of
her window color schemes.... But for myself, her cover, in which some
girls are picking flowers, is far more charming in its easy grace of
composition, choice gravity of color, and spontaneity of feeling. Here is
revealed a very _naïve_ imagination, free of any obsessions."
<b>OCCIONI, SIGNORA LUCILLA MARZOLO.</b> Diploma of gold medal at the
Women's Exhibition, Earl's Court, London, 1900. Born in Trieste. Pupil,
in Rome, of Professor Giuseppe Ferrari.
This artist paints figure subjects, portraits, landscapes, and flowers,
in both oils and water-colors, and also makes pen-drawings. Her works are
in many private galleries. She gives me no list of subjects. Her pictures
have been praised by critics.
<b>O'CONNELL, FREDERIQUE EMILIE AUGUSTE MIETHE.</b> Born in Potsdam.
1823-1885. She passed her early life in her native city, having all the
advantages of a solid and brilliant education. She early exhibited a love
of drawing and devoted herself to the study of anatomical plates. She
soon designed original subjects and introduced persons of her own
imagination, which early marked her as powerful in her fancy and original
in her manner of rendering her ideas.
A picture of "Raphael and the Fornarina," which she executed at the age
of fifteen, was so satisfactory as to determine her fate, and she was
allowed to study art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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