Cathedral

Like many artists, Violet Oakley captured remembrances of her travels in quick sketches, usually in pastel on tinted paper. In this drawing she depicts the south side of the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., specifically the apse and the choir, which were completed in 1929. Based on the plans of Washington D.C.’s first Bishop, Henry Yates Satterlee, the Bishop’s Garden in the foreground contains plants from George Washington’s Hayfield Manor, originally a part of his Mount Vernon estate. The ninth-century baptismal font in the center of the drawing and the stone statue on the right are donations from George Grey Barnard, whose extensive medieval collections formed the basis of The Cloisters in New York.