The Cresson Traveling Scholarship, also known as the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship, is a two-year scholarship for foreign travel and/or study awarded annually to art students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
History and notable laureates Awarded for excellence, the prize was funded by Emlen and Priscilla Cresson in memory of their son William Emlen Cresson, an Academy alumnus who died in 1868 at the age of 23. He had been a child prodigy painter who began exhibiting at the Academy at the age of 11.James-Gadzinski, Susan and Mary Mullen Cunningham, ‘’American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’’, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1997 p. 65 - 66
The first Cresson Traveling Scholarships were awarded in 1902. Initially, they were $1,000 one-year scholarships, renewable for a second year, and sometimes beyond. Multiple awards were given in painting, along with one in sculpture and one in architecture. Awards in illustration were added later.
Cresson European Scholarships of $5000 for summer travel, were also awarded annually. These were not as prestigious as the two-year scholarships, with which they are often confused.
Laura Wheeler Waring, the first African-American woman to win a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, was studying in Paris in 1914 when World War I broke out. Subsequent winners were allowed to postpone their travel until the conflict was over.Pennsylvania impressionism – Google Books
Scholarship winners
Henry R. Rittenberg (painting), 1902 Louis Betts (painting), 1903, 1904 Martha Walter (painting), 1903, 1904 Emilie Zeckwer (painting), 1903, 1904 Giuseppe Donato (sculpture), 1903, 1904 Gilbert L. Hindermyer (architecture), 1903, 1904 Alice V. Corson (painting), 1904, 1905 E. H. Allerton (painting), 1903, 1904 Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer (painting), 1904, 1905 Morris Molarsky (painting), 1904, 1905 Charles Frederick Ramsey (painting), 1904, 1905 F. Hutton Shill (painting), 1904, 1905 Albert Laessle (sculpture), 1904, 1905 Phineas Paist (architecture), 1904, 1905 Arthur B. Carles (painting), 1905, 1906, 1907 Daniel Garber (painting), 1905, 1906 Victor H. Zoll (sculpture), 1905, 1906 William E. Groban (architecture), 1905, 1906 Clarence K. Hinkle (painting), 1906, 1907 John M. Bateman (sculpture), 1906, 1907 Warden H. Fenton (architecture), 1906, 1907 Lawrence Saint (painting), 1907 Thomas Harlan Ellett (architecture), 1907 The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 1907, page 12. C. Edgar Cope (architecture), 1907 The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 1907, page 12. Nina B. Ward (painting), 1908, 1909, 1911 Robert Rodes McGoodwin (architecture), 1908 Cornelia Barns (painting), 1909, 1910 Beatrice Fenton (sculpture), 1909, 1910 Leopold Seyffert, 1910, 1911, 1912 Donald Blake Craig Johns, 1911 Katherine Southwick, 1911, 1912 Gertrude A. Lambert, 1912, 1913 Elsa Jemne, 1914, 1915 Laura Wheeler Waring (painting), 1914, 1915 Edith McMurtrie Charles Skinner Garner, 1916, 1917 Roy Cleveland Nuse, 1917, 1918 Clarence Johnson (painting), 1917. Travel deferred until 1920 because of his service in World War I. Sue May Westcott Gill Walter W. Josephs (painting), 1918 Delphine Bradt (painting), 1918 Raphael Sabatini (sculpture), 1918 Otto Gatter (illustration), 1918 Elmer G. Anderson (painting), 1919 Sara Carles (painting), 1919 Wayne K. Crumling (painting), 1919 Edith W. Dallas (painting), 1919 Elise Fullerton (painting), 1919 Catharine Harley Grant (painting), 1919 Helene Holdt (painting), 1919 Julian Levi (painting), 1919 Mabel Pugh (painting), 1919 Tokio Ueyama (painting), 1919 Bernard Gordon (sculpture), 1919 Jean Knox (illustration), 1919 Abraham Rattner (illustration), 1919 Alfred R. Mitchell, 1920 Morris Blackburn, Gladys Edgerly Bates, 1921 Arthur Meltzer, 1921 Barse Miller (painting), 1922, 1923 Walker Hancock (sculpture), 1922, 1923 Margaret Brisbine, 1923 Walter Inglis Anderson, 1927 Lucius Kutchin, 1927Maurer, Christopher. Fortune's Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003, p. 315. William H. Ferguson, 1927 Marina Timoshenko, 1927 Henry Cooper, 1927 Fred Flanigan, 1927 Margaret Ralston Gest, 1927 Vincent McCoy Reader, 1927 Dorothy L. Van Loan, 1927 Edith Wood, 1927 Benton Murdoch Spruance, 1928 Joseph Plavcan, 1928 Robert Cronbach, 1929, 1930 Charles W. Ward, 1930 Dacre F. Boulton, 1931, 1932 Alvyn Boyd Cruise Charles M. West, Jr., 1934 Roswell Weidner, 1935 Jack Delano, 1936 Geraldine Funk (Alvarez) Dorothy Gilman Butters, 1944The Central New Jersey Home News, Mary 26, 1946, "Wins Art Award", page 9. Raymond Saunders, 1956 Phoebe Chu, 1958 Charles Searles Elizabeth Osborne Barkley L. Hendricks, 1966 Robert Bender, 1973 Jill A. Rupinski, 1976 Bo Bartlett, 1980 James P. Repenning, 1980 Douglas Martenson, 1981 Vincent Desiderio, 1982 Peter Groesbeck Andrea Packard Orit Hofshi, 1989
References