Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Water Color Club

In 1900, Violet Oakley became a founding member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Water Color Club, which was open to both men and women. Membership in the organization would have had encouraging personal associations with her great-uncle Octavius Oakley (1800–1867), who was a member of the Old Watercolour Society in England and the most successful painter in the Oakley family. In 1907, Violet designed a poster for the Fourth Annual Water Color Club Exhibition that featured Michelangelo painting the Prophet Jeremiah on the Sistine Chapel ceiling to remind the viewer that fresco was a type of watercolor. She worked the poster image into a design for a bronze medal for the Water Color Club with the inscription “in praise of the universal medium from monumental to miniature” in 1945.