American Art Collaborative

In late 1913, Oberlin College commissioned Kenyon Cox to decorate the new administration building on the campus with a mural in memory of his father, Jacob Dolson Cox. The elder Cox had been governor of Ohio and secretary of the Interior under President Grant, and Cox designed a decorative tablet listing his father’s accomplishments for a small vestibule. After he completed the project, the administrators wanted Cox to come up with another design to complement it. He decided to include a tribute to his mother, Helen Finney Cox, who had made a name for herself in Ohio as a promoter of social work. This study shows Cox’s plan for a lunette titled “The Spirit of Self-Sacrificing Love,” based on what he described as his mother’s “Biblical charity.” Cox’s depiction of a laurel-crowned, winged figure holding a glowing torch pleased university administrators, who adopted it as the official seal on college publications. (Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, 1994