Fine Arts Scholarship to be awarded in 2018

Print More
A new fine arts scholarship for GMHS graduates will be offered for the class of 2018. Granby resident Susan Patricelli-Regan is establishing the scholarship in her mother’s name.
Sylvia Davis Patricelli was a young and well-known portrait painter in Sydney, Australia, who had attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She had her first exhibition of Solomon Island paintings opened by Lady Gowrie, wife of the Governor-General of Australia in 1941 in Sydney at Anthony Hordern’s Gallery.
She arrived in the United States at 23 as an American war bride and continued to produce many commissioned portraits of notable members of the New England community. Her much heralded success in both Australia and in the U.S. resulted in a subsequent second exhibition of her work opened by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in 1951 at G. Fox & Company, Hartford, Connecticut. The exhibition was sponsored by G. Fox & Co., WTIC and the Wadsworth Athenaeum.
The Patricelli family initially resided in Granby before moving to West Hartford .
Picture

From l.: Superintendent Alan Addley; Susan Patricelli-Regan; Julie Groene, GMHS assistant principal and director of guidance and Michael Dunn, GMHS principal. Regan pictured with charcoal portrait completed in 1947 of “Farmer John Pelka” from a live sitting by her mother, Sylvia Davis Patricelli. Pelka was a neighbor of the Patricelli family in North Granby. Photo by Bill Regan

As a dedication to her mother’s career, Regan established a foundation that provides higher education scholarships for students pursuing a vocation in the arts/related field. One will be awarded to a graduating high school student from West Hartford this spring and another to a senior from Granby Memorial High School in the spring of 2018.
Regan has donated her mother’s pieces to both the Connecticut Historical Society and the West Hartford Historical Society/Noah Webster House.
Patricelli taught at the West Hartford Art League; won many fine arts awards for her still lifes, landscapes and portraits, and completed numbers of commissioned paintings of well-known figures in Connecticut.
Patricelli’s exceptional portrait talent is exhibited in the famous America’s Cup canvases, Pro Golf Tour scenes and golfers and also the renowned Solomon Island native artworks completed six months before WWII. It is a career of diverse subjects and a historical nature that includes life-size portraits of General MacArthur and of Eleanor Roosevelt.
For further information on the purchase of certain selections from the private collections contact Susan Patricelli-Regan at sregan@sylviadavisart.com