The Family Solicitor as Benjamin Franklin

Object Details

Title:

Date:

1930

Artist:

Medium:

Sanguine and graphite on paper, mounted on buff paper

Dimensions

22 3/8 x 15 in.

Classification

Drawings-watercolors

Credit Line:

Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2015

Description

[bottom left of mounted paper in graphite]: V. Oakley; [below right on buff paper in graphite]: The Family Solicitor / as Benjamin FranklinJoseph Lester, a cousin of Elizabeth Shippen Green, was an attorney who helped Oakley and her friends lease the Red Rose Inn near Villanova. For his service, the women affectionately referred to Lester as their “Family Solicitor” and themselves as the “Lawful Heirs.” Lester remained Oakley’s attorney, financial adviser and friend until his death in 1938.

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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.