The Brockett Collection consists of 109 oil paintings created by Violette Brocket during her lifetime. The work was donated by Michael & Sue Terry in 2003 in memoriam.
“Miss Brockett shows us one aspect of her extremely diverse talents, in the manner
of the medium, in the inanimate nature of the composition, in the scene, as much as
by the oil and by the design. In addition, she makes use of tendencies, and more particularly
with the charming account of wishes which recalls the spirit of the imagination of
Epinal, sometimes abstract, but more understanding of the realistic edification than
the pictorial transposition.
In considering the whole effect of her work, it can be said that she paints the subject
lovingly; her touch is powerful; and her style rhythmic, tending sometimes to the
stylization.”
La Revue Moderne
Paris, France
Miss Violette E. Brockett was born in Illinois. She moved to Cleveland as a writer and style consultant for D’Arcy Advertising’s Cleveland office. Her painting career began in 1948 when several famous Cleveland artists saw the sketches she had done of her travels, and they encouraged her to depict them with oil paints.
She traveled extensively all over the world, painting scenes in oil. Many of these
scenic paintings were reproduced for her personal Christmas cards. These cards were
well received by many including Sir Winston Churchill, Linden Johnson, and Dwight
Eisenhower.
She attended the Cleveland Institute of Art under the instruction of Louis Bosa;
the Art Students League of New York; and private instruction under Michael Cammuso
of Chicago and Frederick Mizen of the University of Waco, Texas. In 1964, Miss Brockett
was awarded membership in the Federation Internationale Union Feminine Artisque Et
Culturelle of Paris, when she won a “Diploma d’Honneur” for her oil painting, “The
Sweet Life” which was exhibited by invitation at the Internationale Biennale, at Vichy,
France.
She exhibited extensively in the Ohio area as well as abroad. The style of her oil
paintings ranged from realistic in the her early years of painting to abstract and
expressionistic under the influence of Louis Bosa, and then back to classic realism.
