Philip Clarkson Elliott

Philip Clarkson Elliott was a noted painter, photographer, and educator who painted industrial landscapes, cityscapes, and marine scenes. He was born in 1903 in Minneapolis and began drawing at an early age. He studied at the University of Minnesota for two years before going on to receive his bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale University in 1926. Elliott continued his studies in Paris, where he met fellow artist and his future wife Virginia Cuthbert. The couple married in 1935 and settled in Pittsburgh, where Elliott worked as the assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Pittsburgh.

In 1941 the couple moved to Buffalo, where Elliott served as director of the Albright Art School. During this time both he and Cuthbert became noted artists in the Buffalo community. Elliott’s works were featured in exhibitions at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

Elliot was a central figure in managing the merger of the Albright Art School and the University at Buffalo, where he taught drawing and painting. He and his wife founded the Department of Art at the university, and Elliott served as the first chairman of the department until 1969. The couple also established the Philip C. and Virginia Cuthbert Elliott Painting Scholarship, which is awarded annually to a junior at the University at Buffalo majoring in painting.

Elliott continued to exhibit his work during this time, including shows at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, New York in 1962 and with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery from 1962-1968, winning a prize in 1965. He was also a member of the Patteran Society, the College Art Association of America, and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

In 1971, the Charles Burchfield Center exhibited a retrospective of Philip Elliott and Virginia Cuthbert-Elliott, featuring over 120 works. Elliott’s work is included in collections at the University of Pittsburgh, the Buffalo AKG Museum, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.