With Awards Season now in full swing, we thought we'd share some of the background stories behind our own “Academy Awards”. In this post, we’re looking at two award schemes, which, like the RSA Carnegie Travel Scholarship, recognised the value of a practical award.
Alastair Salvesen Art Scholarship (first presented 1989)
Scots born businessman Alastair Salvesen HRSA CBE is a leading figure in the Scottish seafood industry and a major patron of the arts in Scotland. In 2011, he was awarded a CBE for services to the arts and charity in Scotland.
In 1989 Alastair Salvesen announced his desire to establish the Alastair Salvesen Art Scholarship. The award was open to artists aged between 25 and 35 who were living and working in Scotland, and whose work had already been accepted by certain specified exhibiting societies. Targeted at graduates who had already transitioned from Art School and established themselves as professional artists, the award provided £8,000 to enable the recipient to undertake between 3 to 6 months of overseas travel. The aim was to help broaden their experience and provide an opportunity to prepare for a solo exhibition which would be held at the RSA on their return. The winners were also required to donate a work to RSA Collections.
Edward Summerton, who would go on to become an Academician and hold senior office as Secretary, became the very first recipient of the new Scholarship in 1989. The award was shared between Charles Stiven and Paul Furneaux in 1990, and both artists would go on to join the Academy’s ranks. On one occasion, in 1994, the scholarship was not awarded as the judges decided that none of those who had put themselves forward had displayed the quality of execution which they hoped to see.
RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship (first presented 1981)
Just under a decade before the Alastair Salvesen Art Scholarship was launched, John Blythe Kinross CBE HRSA (1904-89) endowed possibly the most influential and far-reaching award in the Academy’s history, the RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship. Kinross was an accountant who did much to enhance and organise the Academy’s pension funds. His father, John Kinross (1855-1931), had been an architect Member of the Academy, being elected ARSA in 1893 and full Academician in 1905.
In the 1880s, having completed his training, John Kinross undertook a trip to Europe to see at first hand many of the examples of architecture which he knew only second-hand from his study of books. Arriving in Florence he was captivated by the beauty of the city and its buildings. It was a reaction he held dear throughout his life, and must have shared with his son.
In one of the most generous acts of benefaction seen by any of our supporters, John Blythe Kinross sought to honour his father’s memory by creating an award that would give countless other young Scottish students the opportunity to visit Florence.
The RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship is open to final year students at the Scottish Art Colleges. In its first year, just three awards were made. But now, about a dozen awards are made annually - each amounting to about £3000. The recipients are encouraged to use the money to spend as long as they can in Florence. There they are expected to develop their art practice, and are invited to the Academy on their return to attend a portfolio meeting. This provides a platform where they can discuss the impact Florence has had on their practice and share their portfolio of work completed during their travels. An example of their work is then selected for RSA Collections.
Gwyneth Margaret Leech, San Gimignano (c.1985). Pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper.
We celebrated 40 years of the Kinross Scholarship in 2021 (delayed slightly by the Covid pandemic), and it was calculated that £730,000 had been given out to over 450 students across this time. The breadth of ingenuity and imagination of our scholars never ceases to amaze us. Kinross Travel Scholarships have provided critical development opportunities, allowing artists to forge important contacts and open doors beyond their wildest dreams as they step onto Tuscan soil. The earliest works in the Collection by a Kinross Scholar are those by Wendy McMurdo RSA and Gwyneth Leech, both of whom were Kinross Scholars in 1985.
About the author
Robin Rodger
Robin H. Rodger graduated as O. E. Saunders Prizeman in Art History from the University of St Andrews in 1983, before taking his Diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Manchester in 1984. The next 26 years were spent at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, and since 2013 he has been Documentation Officer with the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture. A keen researcher, he has lectured and published widely on Perthshire artists and Perth silver, and is currently engaged in research projects relating to aspects of print and printmaking in Scotland.
