World War II Portable Altarpieces

During World War II, the Citizens Committee of the Army and Navy commissioned artists to design portable altarpieces for military chapels on land and at sea. Composed of metal or wood, the triptychs could be easily transported and stored when not in use. The artists received an honorarium of $200 to $300 for their labor. Twenty-four altarpieces made by Violet Oakley between 1941 and 1946 have been identified, but only a few have been located.

Drawing on her knowledge of religious imagery, Oakley composed religious subjects appropriate for all three branches of the military, such as David and Goliath and the Madonna of the Crusaders. Her first triptych, The Angel of Victory, now in the collection of the Delaware Art Museum, was made in 1941 for the Naval Air Base at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. She painted the four-foot-high altar with monumental figures standing on the Earth with the sun forming haloes around their heads. On the left, Saint Michael the Archangel, in Roman battle dress, stands astride the evil creature as the fires of Hell burn in the distance. On the right, Saint George, the medieval knight in armor, plants his standard on the Earth next to the vanquished dragon. In the center, the Angel Gabriel proclaims peace with an olive branch where the members of the Air Force have gathered.

The Gospels related several events in the life of Jesus, which provided water imagery for naval altarpieces. In 1944, Oakley designed a three-foot-high metal triptych for the USS Cebu, a repair ship that serviced the Pacific fleet. The wings are gold with small square inserts of images, inscriptions, and decorative borders. The center panel depicts Jesus walking on the water, extending his hand to a drowning man as a ship capsizes in the background. The inscription reads, “Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid.” In the closed position, the altarpiece is red with an emblem of a ship with the Greek letters alpha and omega and a fish with the Greek letters ichtys, a symbol used by early Christians. The altarpiece is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Other altarpieces for the Navy depicted Christ Stilling the Storm (an image she had used in the Supreme Court Room to represent Disarmament), Christ at the Pool of Bethesda, Madonna of the Ships, and Madonna of the Sea. The most impressive altarpiece was the monumental Christ the Carpenter for the Philadelphia Naval Yard Chapel, which portrays Jesus as a strong young man in a tunic building the hull of a ship. Beneath the workbench, his pet dog watches as he bears lumber onto his shoulder in a pose that foreshadows the carrying of the cross.

To assuage the fear of death in the wounded, Oakley made altarpieces of the Widow of Nain from the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus raises the widow’s son from the dead, for the US Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia; Halloran Hospital in Staten Island, New York; and Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.