Cuyahoga County Courthouse, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787"

The Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, gave Violet Oakley her only civic commission outside Pennsylvania. Charles F. Schweinfurth, the interior architect of the new building designed by Charles Morris for Lehman and Schmitt, planned to celebrate the tradition of English constitutional law in the United States with murals by British and American painters. In 1911, he paired Oakley, who had demonstrated her knowledge of English political history in her mural series for the Governor’s Grand Executive Reception Room, with Frank Brangwyn, who had recently completed murals for the Skinners' Company and the Royal Exchange in London. Oakley and Brangwyn were each paid $20,000 to paint a lunette, fifteen feet by forty feet, in oil on canvas, to be installed on opposite walls of the second floor overlooking the entrance hall.

Each mural commemorated a historical event in the development of constitutional law. With a riot of bright colors that became his signature style, Brangwyn portrayed a motley crowd outdoors watching King John signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede, June 15, 1215 on the south wall. Oakley represented the the last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787, when the Constitution was finally adopted, in a more sober palette. “The scene I have chosen is that of the morning of September 17th,” Oakley told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “when Benjamin Franklin rose and handed to James Wilson the speech he had written urging the delegates to unite and sign the Constitution.”¹ She designed the mural so that the marble framed doorway built into the center of the lunette appeared to open into the interior of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, where the Convention was held. To the right of the door, she placed Franklin handing his speech to Wilson with James Madison and the other delegates seated behind them. On the left, Washington deliberates at his desk on a raised dais, with Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and Colonel William Jackson. A standing globe in the foreground suggests the international implications of their decision.

Oakley must have been inordinately proud of the mural because she signed it in prominent letters with a copyright symbol. City officials objected immediately and withheld the balance of her fee ($9,000) until she agreed to reduce the size of her signature and remove the copyright symbol, which prevented them from photographing or reproducing the mural. She initially refused, but on July 14, 1915, Philadelphia’s Evening Public Ledger reported “Violet Oakley Yields.”²

¹ Plain Dealer (Cleveland), May 23, 1915.

² Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), July 14, 1915.