Violet Oakley--a versatile portraitist, illustrator, stained-glass artisan, and muralist--earned a reputation as the first American woman artist to succeed in the predominantly male architectural field of mural decoration. She began her career as a magazine and book illustrator, and while her peak period of creating for the literary and popular periodicals lasted from 1897 to 1908, Oakley continued to contribute illustrations while working on her murals. Her strong commitment to her religion and world peace influenced her art as well as her life.

Oakley was born in Bergen Heights, New Jersey, to the artistic family of Arthur Edmund Oakley and Cornelia Swain Oakley. Both of her grandfathers, George Oakley and William Swain, belonged to the National Academy of Design, and two of her aunts studied painting in Munich with Frank Duveneck. Oakley believed that her compulsion to draw was "hereditary and chronic." In an interview with the Baltimore Sun (20 August...