Frances Elizabeth Oakley
Date
c. 1895Medium
Oil on canvasCredit Line
Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015Dimensions
25 x 15 in.Description & Inscriptions
Exhibition label for PAFA’s 70th Annual Exhibition, 1901, label information: “Aunt Fanny, 1523 Chestnut St., 154 in triangle. OP51A.
This portrait of Frances Elizabeth Oakley, the artist’s godmother and aunt (her father’s sister), is one of Oakley’s earliest known paintings. Frances Oakley lived in Tangier, a large city in Morocco, and Violet Oakley often visited her during her travels in Europe. Oakley credited Frances and her father’s other sisters with encouraging her self-confidence.
Oakley likely made this painting during a trip to Tangier in 1895. Its black, moody tonalities were perhaps inspired by the famous nocturnes and portrait “arrangements” of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The bond between Oakley and her aunt is made visible in the inclusion of a self-portrait of the artist in a white painter’s smock and palette in the mirror at the upper right.
This portrait of Frances Elizabeth Oakley, the artist’s godmother and aunt (her father’s sister), is one of Oakley’s earliest known paintings. Frances Oakley lived in Tangier, a large city in Morocco, and Violet Oakley often visited her during her travels in Europe. Oakley credited Frances and her father’s other sisters with encouraging her self-confidence.
Oakley likely made this painting during a trip to Tangier in 1895. Its black, moody tonalities were perhaps inspired by the famous nocturnes and portrait “arrangements” of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The bond between Oakley and her aunt is made visible in the inclusion of a self-portrait of the artist in a white painter’s smock and palette in the mirror at the upper right.
