Eugene Francis Savage

Who was Eugene Francis Savage?

Eugene Francis Savage was an American painter and sculptor known for his murals in the manner made official under the Works Projects Administration. He also is known for his work on the Bailey Fountain in Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York.

He was born in Covington, Indiana. In 1915, while studying at the Chicago Art Institute, he won the Rome Prize in painting, enabling him to study at the American Academy in Rome, where he received a bachelor of arts degree. Later he received bachelor and master of fine arts degrees from Yale, where he taught for twenty-eight years. While acting as a member of the Fine Arts committee of the American Academy in Rome, he ensured, though not a member of the jury, that a generation of winning artists were painting in the manner of Thomas Hart Benton or Savage himself. He became an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design, 1924 and National Academician, 1926. Other contemporary influences on his public art were his Latin American contemporaries Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Savage also served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1933 to 1941 and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was elected in 1936.