Little Savages

He who always wins, courts boredom. Threatened last week with such boredom was Eugene Francis Savage, spry and dapper Leffingwell Professor of Painting at Yale University. Again he beamed upon the annual list of Prix de Rome awards. Again a pupil of his headed the roll of honor. And, as usual the winning painting, a mother and child, faithfully imitated the painting style of Leffingwell Professor Eugene Francis Savage.

So strong is Professor Savage's influence over his students' style, so fortunate have been their depictions of attitudinous, great muscled nudes (his favorite subject), that in Yale circles the coterie of Prix de Rome winners has come to be known as "The Little Savages." Last year the "Little Savage" who went to Rome was Salvatore De Maio. In 1929 John Fitton, and in 1928 Donald H. Mattison were the lucky "Little Savages."

To compete for the Prix de Rome, candidates are expected not only to submit paintings and sketches for exhibition in Manhattan's Grand Central Palace, but to present themselves at an afternoon tea. There the judges and trustees (of which Professor Savage is one) of the American Academy in Rome inspect each individual. The judges' choice, traditionally a personable as well as talented young man, receives from the Academy a studio and residence on Rome's Janiculum Hill for three years--an honorarium valued at about $8,000--plus $500 in traveling expenses.

Judges of painting this year were Artists Gari Melchers, Abram Poole, Ezra Winter, Barry Faulkner, Austin Purves Jr. They gave the prize to "Little Savage" Harry Gregory Ackerman, 21, of New York City, a graduate of the National Academy of Design's Manhattan school who worked his way through Yale by winning scholarships. He is a native of Rumania.

Sculpture. Winner of the Prix de Rome in sculpture, also announced last week, was Warren Towle Mosman, 22, of Bridgeport, Conn. He is also from Yale; his winning figure Ange Rebelle, though he studied under another master, might well classify him with the "Little Savages."

Architecture. Henry Dustin Mirick, 25, of Washington will go to Rome also. His plan for a U. S. Army officers club in the tropics won the architectural exhibit. He executed it at the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture, where he studied after graduation from Princeton in 1927.

In landscape architecture, the winner was Neil Hamill Park. 36, of Parkin, Ark., a graduate of Little Rock College and Cornell.

P: Though usually low on the Prix de Rome lists, Harvard is not without able art students. Harvardman William F. Pederson last week received $1,000 for best paper in the College Art Association's examination. A second prize of $500 was divided between Edgar Craig Schenck and Joseph Curtis Sloane Jr, both of Princeton.

Also awarded last week were prizes for the college art currently on exhibition in Manhattan. Winners included: oil painting, Jean Elizabeth Wade of Yale; watercolor, C. E. Hewitt of Princeton; drypoint, Mildred Shute of Kentucky; sculpture, Robert Koepnick of Dayton Art Institute.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.