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Elevation study for three murals above fireplace, from the series "Great Women of the Bible," First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, PA
Elevation study for three murals above fireplace, from the series "Great Women of the Bible," First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, PA

Elevation study for three murals above fireplace, from the series "Great Women of the Bible," First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, PA

First Presbyterian, "Great Women"
,
Philadelphia, PA

Object Details

Title:
Elevation study for three murals above fireplace, from the series "Great Women of the Bible," First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, PA
Date:
c. 1945–48
Artist:
Medium:
Pastel on brown paper
Dimensions
19 x 24 1/2 in. (sheet)
Classification
Murals
Credit Line:
Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2015
Description

This elevation study is for Oakley’s last mural series, Great Women of the Bible, commissioned by the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown. Produced over a four-year period from 1945 to 1949 when she was in her seventies, the work was created in collaboration with Edith Emerson. Great Women of the Bible is Oakley’s only commission for a church that has survived in its original location; the murals have been maintained in excellent condition for nearly seventy years and over one hundred studies are preserved in the collection of the La Salle University Art Museum.

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The Violet Oakley Experience is funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
For her expertise and scholarship on The Violet Oakley Experience, Woodmere thanks Patricia Likos Ricci. The foremost authority on Oakley, she is the Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Associate Professor of the History of Art, and a member of the Women and Gender Studies faculty at Elizabethtown College.
Woodmere’s website infrastructure and the digitization of the Museum’s collection are made possible by the generous support of Lisa Kabnick and John McFadden.