Ellis Augustus Oliver
(1872-1937)

Education

My grandfather, Ellis Augustus Oliver, was born to Andrew B. and Sarah Frances (Coil) Oliver on 5 September 1872 in Van Wert County, Ohio. He participated in official classes at Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry under Howard Pyle (1853-1911). E.A. Oliver was a member of Pyle's final course there that began in February 1899. Pyle had been teaching illustration at Drexel since 1894. The majority of his students followed Howard Pyle to his own "Brandywine School" in Wilmington, Delaware, but Grandfather did not. Perhaps, at 25, he had finally landed a job making pictures in Philadelphia's burgeoning advertising industry. The Philadelphia Ledger, The Saturday Evening Post, and numerous monthlies and weeklies clogged the wharves of the nations' most significant port, and the maw of capitalistic promotion and exploitation devoured the artistic talent of WWI's survivors. "E. A. Oliver's name appears on the printed listings of Drexel's annual exhibitions of student work shown at the end of each school year. He did not, however, complete a certificate or a diploma" (Joy Collins, 1993).

Family

The Philadelphia City Directory lists his address in 1903 as 3214 Chestnut Street, but Ellis Oliver and his bride, Kathryn Marie Gaughn (1879-1971), moved into a three-story brownstone at 3311 Walnut Street. After the birth of her first son, Ellis Jr., Grandmother traveled to Ohio to meet her somewhat intimidating, non-Catholic mother-in-law. Kathryn continued to live on Walnut Street until the expansion of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960's forced her to move. The ancestral property now supports Eero Saarinen's (1910-1961) fortress-like Hill College House -- Penn's largest dormitory.

Grandfather provided for his young family through his work as a commercial artist for, among other firms, Ketterlinus Lithographic Mfg. Co. (founded 1842). During his career he also did contract work for several of Philadelphia's highly successful advertising firms. Drawing on his rural Ohio upbringing, he produced convincing images of "contented cows" for the labels of Carnation^® brand evaporated milk.

Although eventual steady work and resulting security allowed E.A. Oliver to spend most of the Great Depression in retirement, the sad memory lingered for the young parents of several children lost just before Armistice to the pandemic of "Spanish Influenza" that swept the world, America and Philadelphia. Three boys and a girl survived to adulthood: Ellis Jr., Andrew Breese, Frances, and John Herbert ("Herb"), my father. My father long remembered the catechism and Spanish he learned at West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys, and his two oldest sons are proud "Burr" alumni of that same De La Salle Christian Brothers' school, then established at 49th and Chestnut Streets, not far from its present location. John Herbert declined his father's offer to support matriculation at the University of Pennsylvania. His sister, Frances, attended West Philadelphia High School with Jeanette MacDonald (1903/07?-1965).

Friends

Music and art were integral elements of family life on Walnut Street. On Tuesday evenings a group of musicians met there regularly. At a very early age, my dad, John Herbert (1911-1985), took his usual place at the drums. As boys, my older brother, my younger brothers and I took our own turns many years later at the same piano playing and singing for Grandmother a haunting Irish lyric beloved by two previous generations, M.W. Balfe's "Marble Halls." My Aunt Frances (d. 1947) had, no doubt, acquired the sheet music for she was an accomplished pianist as well as an artist. If your computer handles midi files, listen to "her favorite song" (.mid, 6.9K, 02:16 min.)

Evidence suggests that Ellis A. Oliver was a sometime member of the rebellious Philadelphia Sketch Club -- still in existence at 235 South Camac Street as a meeting-place for practicing artists and their life models. The self-portrait above might have been a requirement of membership since similarly-sized portraits create a frieze for the ground-floor, public rooms of the Sketch Club. The Sketch Club was founded in 1860, before the Civil War, by disaffected artists out of tune with the imperious conduct of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. More characteristically, Grandfather also belonged to the Scumblers' Club, a highly informal group of artists that renovated an abandoned barn at Edison, PA, near Doylestown in Bucks County. The Scumblers also visited New Jersey, Chester, and other counties on sketching parties, "where the large pine forests and hidden lakes of the somber-tinted cedar water still remain rich in romance" (Hofstetter).

Part Two

EAO. "In the Shadow," [East River Drive?] watercolor, PAFA entry, 1918.
 

Sources of Information
and Related WWW sites

Ellis A. Oliver (1872-1937):
Three Pastels
(APOW: "the most permanent of all the mediums in existence")
Thirteen Watercolors
Undoubtedly, after a song, the most evanescant. RO.

December 1994; family photographs and new links added 22 March 1996; text substantially expanded on 17 May 1998.

Dom Richard OSB
Box 2015
Saint John's Abbey
Collegeville, MN 56321-2015

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