Miami Lost, the Seminole Photographs of Eugene F. Savage
First published 4/11/2018
In 1935 buoyed by the success of the sale of his Hall of State Centennial Murals to the state of Texas, deep in the Great Depression the artist Eugene Francis Savage drove from his home in Ossining, New York all the way down Route 1 to Miami, Florida where he studied the Seminole Indians. Eventually his paintings of these people would be the subject of a 1936 exhibition at Ferargil Galleries in New York City. Like many other artistic peculative efforts in the 1930's, aside from the sale of one canvas to the Rhode Island School of Design art museum, it was not much of a financial success and the paintings, except for a few museum shows, were lost in storage until being rediscovered in 2007, when they were sold to the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida.
Four years later the 2007 rediscovery, the photos, and their original negatives, that Eugene Savage took in Florida on that 1935 trip were found in an old cardboard box in the attic of the artists grandson in Woodbury, CT. They too were purchased by the Cummer Museum. This is the first time these once lost photos have ever appeared in the media.
Eugene Savage, Seminole Mother and Child, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Village, 1935
Eugene Savage, Interior of a Chickee Hut, Seminole Mother and Child, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Children, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Family, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Woman, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Children, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Mother and Child, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Women, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Family, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Women, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Women and Cookfire, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Women using a Singer Sewing Machine, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Paddling a Canoe, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminoles in a Canoe, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Paddling a Canoe, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Paddling a Canoe, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Guide with Artist in the Everglades, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man and an Alligator Wrestling Show, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Wrestling a Gator Show, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Wrestling a Gator, 1935
Eugene Savage, Seminole Man Wrestling, 1935