# Sketch for the Mural at Oberlin College, "The Spirit of Self-Sacrificing Love"

- By: Kenyon Cox (born Warren, OH 1856-died New York City 1919)
- Date: ca. 1914
- Medium: oil and pencil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 11 7/8 x 15 1/4 in. (30.2 x 38.8 cm.)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Ambrose Lansing
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=5881)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/9d9faa7895f69729b73e736c59ca6400.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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)