The Romany Eveleigh gift for students of the arts
Dawson students received an early holiday gift this week: a $50,000 donation to seed awards, scholarships and grants for students in the arts. Details of the first award, honouring the late filmmaker and Dawson Cinema | Communication’s alumni Jeff Barnaby, will be published in the new year. Open to all Arts, Literature and Communication students the award will grant $3,000 a year to graduating students for film production projects.
Benefactor Romany Eveleigh (1934 – 2020) was a British-Canadian artist, known for her spare and affective abstract paintings and drawings, great whit, charm and erudition. Born in London, England on December 10, 1934 to the artist’s model Ivy Florence Beasley and painter and designer Henry Eveleigh, she was raised in Montréal, beginning her art training at École des Beaux arts de Montréal before returning to London in the mid-1950s to study at her father’s alma mater, the Slade School of Fine Arts. A visit to Italy in the early 1960s sparked a love affair with the country that never ended. Settling in Rome, Eveleigh spent the rest of her life travelling throughout Europe and Asia, and between Rome, New York and Montréal. Eveleigh died at her home in Rome on March 26, 2020, with her long-time companion, the distinguished, Italian filmmaker and photographer Anna Baldazzi by her side.
An ardent historian, bibliophile and cinephile, prior to her death Eveleigh requested that a portion of the proceeds from future sales of her work be given to support students of the arts. The “Romany Eveleigh Gift” at Dawson is an early beneficiary of this fund.
Eveleigh’s artwork is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Canada, The Museum of Fine Arts and Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal as well as numerous other public and private collections in Europe, the US and Canada. Galeries Bellemare Lambert in Montréal and Richard Saltoun Gallery, in London and Rome, represent the artworks from Eveleigh’s estate.
More information on the Jeff Barnaby grant for cinema production will be published in the new year.
