Youth and the Arts

Impressed by a series of murals Oakley had completed in the Pennsylvania State Capitol, banker Charlton Yarnall commissioned Oakley to create a series of murals for the entrance hall and music room of his new neo-renaissance mansion at 17th and Locusts Streets in Philadelphia. The murals, collectively titled Building the House of Wisdom (1911), are considered to be among Oakley’s greatest achievements. Youth and the Arts is the second in a series of three large lunettes. Here the child, symbolizing Culture, has reached early adulthood.

Youth and the Arts is set on a balcony, the sky appearing through a classical archway. The young adults are the approximate ages of Charlton Yarnall’s older children, Alexander and Margaret. At left, seated near a cello and a harp, a young man plays the flute while a young woman in blue peruses a book of prints. At right, a dark-haired woman with her back to the viewer listens to the music while a standing blonde woman sings. Behind them at the piano is an intense man whose irregular hairline and features suggest Leopold Stokowski, a rising star in the classical music world who would become the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in October 1912. Oakley drew Stokowski many times from her seat in the orchestra and he would be the first recipient of the Philadelphia Award, which she would design in 1921.

Here the child, symbolizing Culture, has reached early adulthood. Youth and the Arts shows a gathering of young people playing musical instruments and singing. As the piano accompanist, our child (now a man) binds the group together by providing the tempo and filling out the sound produced by the singer and flutist. Three beautifully attired women suggest the Three Graces, who during the Renaissance symbolized the peaceful, disinterested love that offers total devotion and demands nothing in return. If The Child and Tradition symbolizes ancient man and his creation of Wisdom, Youth and the Arts symbolizes the Renaissance period and the flowering of humankind’s artistic potential.

Youth and the Arts embodies the Renaissance flowering of humankind’s artistic potential. It is inscribed with a verse from Psalm 144:12: “I will sing a new song to thee upon an instrument of ten strings . . . that our sons may be as plants grown up in their Youth. And our Daughters as cornerstones polished.”

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