The male figure, nude except for the fig leaf, represents Wisdom. The boy on the left holds a cornucopia. The sculpture built in 1932 by the architect Egerton Swartwout and the sculptor Eugene Francis Savage. The fountain is a popular gathering spot for wedding photographs.
Eugene Francis Savage
(b. 1883 Covington IN – d. Woodbury, CT 1973)
first studied art at the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, DC) and The Art Institute of Chicago. In 1912, he won the Prix de Rome to study in Rome at the American Academy. There he made drawing and painting studies of the human form, and learned traditional mural techniques. Back in America, he worked on mural commissions for the U.S. and Europe. He developed a modern style influenced by his contemporaries like David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957).Savage became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York in the 1920s, and worked with the WPA Federal Arts Program during the Great Depression. He painted murals at Columbia University; at Yale University in New Haven, CT; in Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL and Indiana (the Purdue University Library). He painted a series of murals for the Matson Shipping Line. The murals were never installed, but smaller reproductions of them are still in print. In 1947, Savage began teaching painting at Yale University. In his later years, he painted easel paintings detailing the customs and traditions of the Seminole Indians of Florida.
Egerton Swartwout
(b. 1870 Fort Wayne, IN – d. NY 1943)
was an architect. He graduated from Yale University (BA), New Haven, CT, in 1891 and entered the office of McKim, Mead & White in 1892. There he met Evarts Tracy (1868-1929) with whom he formed a partnership in 1900 as Tracy Swartout & Co. Their practice encompassed Greco-Roman and Renaissance classicism and included the Connecticut Savings Banks (1906), New Haven; the Department of Commerce Building (1912) in Washington, DC; and the Missouri State Capitol (1912-16), Jefferson City, MO.After Tracy retired in 1915, Swartwout maintained a small office, doing limited work, including the Town Hall (1919), Milford, CT; the US Post Office and Courthouse (1923), Denver, CO; and the neoclassical Elks Memorial Building (1922-6), Chicago, IL, which he considered his best work. Swartwout later made the Municipal Auditorium (1928) in Macon, GA, and the Bailey Memorial (1929) in the Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY. For Brookwood Cemetery near London, England he created a building designed to honor American WWI dead. At Montsec, France, there is another WWI commemorative building. Perhaps his best-known design was the Yale Club in New York. He was living there when he died.
|
1) Prospect Park & Vicinity Map [19]
