Red Rose Girls retrospective at Norman Rockwell Museum

Art Business News, Nov, 2003

More than 100 original oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, photographs, books and magazine tear sheets make up a major retrospective of the extraordinary lives and works of pioneering female illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley at the Norman Rockwell Museum this winter.

Remembered for their touching representations of children and domestic life, Smith (1863-1935), Green (1871-1954) and Oakley (1874-1961) were professional artists during a time when it was very uncommon for women to choose art as a career. The three formed an artistic sisterhood, establishing a home and studio in the Red Rose Inn (from which their moniker was derived) in Philadelphia and adopting a single, childless lifestyle in order to pursue their careers. Smith's and Green's Images, published in such periodicals as Scribner's, Harper's Monthly Magazine and Good Housekeeping, and Oakley's paintings, stained glass and murals, depicted scenes of home and family that reflected the aspirations of middle-class society.

"These women were considered the most influential artists of American domestic life at the turn of the 20th century," said Norman Rockwell Museum director Laurie Norton Moffatt. "Their poetic, idealized images still prevail as archetypes of motherhood and childhood a century later."

Running Nov. 8 through May 31, 2004, "The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love" features paintings on loan from public and private collections, including some that have never before been displayed in public.

SHOW FACTS

"The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love"

Nov. 8 through May 31, 2004

Norman Rockwell Museum

Address: 9 Glendale Road Stockbridge, MA

Phone: (413) 298-4100, ext. 220

Web site: www.nrm.org