Portrait study of Huger Elliott
Date
1921Medium
Graphite on onion skin paperCredit Line
Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2015Dimensions
13 x 9 9 in.Description & Inscriptions
[lower right in graphite]: Violet Oakley / 1921; [bottom left in graphite]: Huger [sic] Elliott
Upon his appointment in 1911 as Director of the Rhode Island School of Design, Elliott married Elizabeth Shippen Green, taking her to Providence and thus breaking up the Red Rose Girls. The press made a scandal of the wedding, insinuating it as a cover of Elliott’s homosexuality, and that Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith and Henrietta Cozens were left at Cogslea bereft and distraught. Oakley denied the accusations and remained close friends of both. She made her portrait studies of Elliott upon the couple’s return to Philadelphia in 1921 when he was named Principal of the School of Industrial Art of the Pennsylvania Museum (now Philadelphia Museum of Art).
Upon his appointment in 1911 as Director of the Rhode Island School of Design, Elliott married Elizabeth Shippen Green, taking her to Providence and thus breaking up the Red Rose Girls. The press made a scandal of the wedding, insinuating it as a cover of Elliott’s homosexuality, and that Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith and Henrietta Cozens were left at Cogslea bereft and distraught. Oakley denied the accusations and remained close friends of both. She made her portrait studies of Elliott upon the couple’s return to Philadelphia in 1921 when he was named Principal of the School of Industrial Art of the Pennsylvania Museum (now Philadelphia Museum of Art).
