Eugene Savage
American (1883-1978)
Eugene Savage was born in Covington, Indiana. He began his art education at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he won a Prix de Rome scholarship to study at the American Academy in Rome in 1915. He also studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts at Yale University, where he taught mural painting for 28 years.
Many of Savage’s works were produced under the purview of the Works Progress Administration. His murals adorn the New York State Court of Appeals dome, the Indiana State House, Columbia and Yale University libraries and the Post Office building in Federal Triangle, among numerous other institutions around the United States. Savage also sculpted the Bailey Memorial Fountain in the Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York, and did mosaic work for the United States War Memorial in Epinal, France, and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York.
His painting style influenced a generation of emerging artists at the American Academy in Rome and he himself took inspiration from painters of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as contemporaries Thomas Hart Benton, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco.
Savage was a member of the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. He also served as a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, and in the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1933 to 1941. Savage was awarded many honors during his career, including the Prix de Rome in 1912, the Clarke Prize of the National Academy of Design in 1923, and the 1921 Architectural League Medal of Honor.
