Eugene Francis Savage was a late proponent of allegorical academic figure painting who continued this tradition in mural painting well into the middle of the twentieth century. He began his art education in 1899 by attending evening classes at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. He also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he won the Prix de Rome competition. He resided at the American Academy in Rome from 1912 to 1915, and his experiences there determined the course of his art. Not only did he become a practitioner of academic painting, drawing heavily on allegorical subject matter and classical elements, he also became a proponent of the need for collaboration among the arts, a belief that led to his working as a muralist.
Savage is reported to have been in Munich for several months in 1913, studying art with Wilhelm Menzler (born 1846) and color theory with Hermann Groeber (1865-1935). He may have been exposed to Jugendstil and expressionist art at that time. In New York during the 1920s he gained a reputation as the most successful painter trained at the American Academy of Rome when he exhibited a series of easel paintings of idyllic subjects at the Architectural League. Savage also painted in the Florida Everglades and Hawaii. His first major mural commission was for the Elks National Memorial rotunda in Chicago, a large cycle completed in the late 1920s (watercolor studies for it are in the museum’s collection; q.v.). Among the many mural commissions he received were ones for the Yale University Library, 1932-33, the Communication Building at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, 1937-38, and the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany, 1958-59. Late in life he designed several mosaic murals. Savage taught at Yale University for more than twenty-five years, beginning in 1923. In 1933 he was appointed by President Hoover to the National Commission of Fine Arts, on which he served during the Roosevelt administration as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Waterbury, Conn., Mattatuck Museum, artist’s file § F. Newlin Price, "An Apostle of Unity," International Studio 79 (April 1924): 2-8 § Grand Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the United States, The Elks National Memorial (1931; reprint, Chicago: Elks National Memorial and Publication Commission, 1974) § Index 20th Cent. Artists 2 (April 1935): 109-11; 2 (September 1935): III; 3 (August-September 1936): IX; reprint, pp. 380-82, 386, 392 § Jean C. Sapin, "Eugene Francis Savage: American Muralist," Master’s thesis, California State University, Northridge, 1979, with bibliography, list of known works.
