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Violet Oakley
(American, 1874 - 1961)
Love Your Enemies
ca. 1897
18 × 23 7/8 in. (45.7 × 60.6 cm)
83.13.1
Gift of the Violet Oakley Memorial Foundation, 1983
On view
After studying at the Art Students League of New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Violet Oakley joined Howard Pyle’s illustration class at the Drexel Institute. Throughout her career, she remained close with other women artists who studied with Pyle and worked in illustration. This painting was probably created for Pyle's advanced class in illustration, in which he emphasized compositional groupings of figures. Pyle often assigned themes similar to those he depicted in his own work. Oakley’s painting is related to Pyle’s work of the same subject titled The Enemy at the Door, published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1895.
