Dates:
April 29 - July 18, 2010
Historic Landmark Building
Description:
In celebration of the acquisition of Violet Oakley’s stained glass lancet windows The Wise and Foolish Virgins and Tiffany Studios’ Saint Cornelius and Angel, PAFA presents a selection of religious art by Oakley from the vast holdings of the Violet Oakley Memorial Foundation at the Academy. Included are sensitively drawn studies for various ecclesiastical projects, the full-scale oil cartoons for The Wise and Foolish Virgins, and examples of Oakley’s World War II altarpieces. The latter works were commissioned by the Citizens Committee of New York and were designed as portable altarpieces for services in the field, on ships at sea, and in base chapels. Included in the installation are a painted study for a triptych and one intact triptych dedicated to the Madonna of the Crusaders.
Violet Oakley (1874-1961)
Student 1896
Faculty 1912-17
The Wise and Foolish Virgins, 1908-09
Stained glass lancet windows
John S. Phillips Fund, 2009.2.1a&b
The subject of Violet Oakley’s windows is the biblical parable of The Wise and Foolish Virgins (Mathew 25:1-13). In this passage, ten virgins arrive at a wedding feast and only five of them have brought oil for their lamps. The five foolish virgins are unable to attend the feast because they must go and secure oil. The last line of the parable reveals the story to be a lesson about being prepared for judgment day: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know th day or the hour.” This was a popular subject of religious decoration from the medieval period through the first part of the twentieth century. For instance Henry O. Tanner’s painting The Wise and Foolish Virgins hung nearby Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. Oakley studied at PAFA and taught mural painting here from 1912 to 1917. Although she is best known as an illustrator, she was also a prominent mural painter and designer of stained glass. PAFA is fortunate to own the original full-scale oil studies by Oakley for these windows. With its vivid colors and blending of medieval and modern traditions, the windows are one of Oakley’s finest creations. The windows and cartoons complement more than 2,000 of the artist’s paintings and drawings already in PAFA’s collection. The windows were made for St. Peter’s Church in nearby Germantown, which, like PAFA’s 1876 building, was designed by Frank Furness and George Hewitt. These windows are among only three Oakley window projects that survive.
Tiffany Studios (1902-1933)
Saint Cornelius and Angel, ca.1910
Stained glass lancet windows
John S. Phillips Fund, 2009.2.2a&b
The subjects of these two panels are St. Cornelius, on the right, and an Angel, on the left. St. Cornelius was an early Christian Pope who held the position for only two years in about 250 AD. He died after torture and was martyred by beheading in 253. In the Tiffany window Cornelius is imagined as the young Roman aristocrat that he was before he became Pope. The windows were made in memoriam to Henry S. Grove, a young Philadelphia banker and leading member of St. Peter’s congregation. Like Cornelius, Grove died before his time - of pneumonia - at the age of 30. Inscribed on the windows is “Thy Prayers and Thine Alms are Come up for a Memorial Before God.” The windows were designed by Tiffany Studios, which were founded by famed stained glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). The revolutionary technique of Tiffany stained glass is what gives these windows their beauty. The artist pioneered the use of opalescent glass, internally colored with varied shades of the same or different colors, which enabled artists to substitute the tone, texture and color inherent in glass itself for the pictorial details that previously had been painted on glass. Also used to create the windows was the layering of planes of glass to attain depth of color and three-dimensional effects.
Curator:
Anna Marley, Curator of Historical American Art
Click here to read Peter Crimmins piece on the stained glass windows.