Prentiss, Elisabeth Severance Allen (1865-1944)

Dates

• Existence: 1865 - 1944

Biography

Elisabeth (“Bessie”) Severance Allen Prentiss was a generous benefactress of educational, art, and medical causes, including the CMA. Other recipients of her gifts include Oberlin College, St. Luke's Hospital, the Cleveland Health Museum, and Western Reserve University. Born in Titusville, Pennsylvania to Louis H. and Fanny Benedict Severance, Elisabeth was educated in Cleveland and graduated from Wellesley College in 1887. Elisabeth was twice widowed. In 1892 she married Cleveland surgeon Dudley P. Allen; he died in 1915. In 1917 she married industrialist Francis F. Prentiss, who died in 1937. Neither marriage produced children.

Dr. Allen, Elisabeth’s first husband, was elected as the first “outside” trustee at the CMA. He was named to the museum’s Accessions Committee in 1914, soon after its incorporation. Interested in improving the critical faculties and artistic standards of the working class, he endeavored to renew appreciation of the decorative arts. The CMA’s first director, Frederic A. Whiting, had similar ambitions for the development of the museum’s permanent collection, believing that an art museum serving an iron and steel manufacturing center should display inspirational examples of metalwork. As Allen took up Whiting’s concept for an armor court, he and Elisabeth asked to be shown tapestries by New York art and antique dealers. Allen died before he could secure trustee funds to purchase the seventeenth-century Barberini tapestries; however, Elisabeth purchased and donated the tapestries to the CMA in his memory. She was a member of the museum’s Advisory Council in 1923-37 and a trustee from 1937 to her death in 1944.

Continuing the Severance and Allen family traditions of philanthropy, Elisabeth provided building and/or operating funds for a number of institutions. She and Dr. Allen gifted building funds for an art museum at Oberlin College, where Dr. Allen earned his undergraduate degree, and where his father had served as a trustee. Elisabeth’s father, Louis Henry Severance, financed Oberlin’s science building erected in 1901. After her husband’s death in 1915, Elisabeth worked closely with the architect chosen for Oberlin's art museum, Cass Gilbert, over the next two years of its planning and construction. The Allen Memorial Art Museum was dedicated in 1917, the year of her marriage to Francis F. Prentiss. Oberlin installed a large portrait of Elisabeth in the museum in 1938 following the completion of an addition with her support. In 1925 Dr. Allen’s bequest financed the Allen Memorial Hospital in Oberlin, also by Cass Gilbert. Additionally, Elisabeth established the Allen Memorial Library at Western Reserve University in 1926.

Mrs. Prentiss was president of the Women’s Committee of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1925 to 1927 and made a large gift to its endowment fund. She was a charter member and trustee of the Musical Arts Association, ultimately serving as its vice president. She received the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce distinguished public service medal in 1928, the first woman so honored. In 1937 she succeeded her second husband as president of St. Luke's Hospital and continued his work in its expansion. Mrs. Prentiss helped establish the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation to promote medical and surgical care and research in Cleveland in 1939. Oberlin College’s board of trustees gave her a special citation of appreciation in 1943 for its art museum and hospital. In 1944 the Cleveland Health Museum established the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss National Award in Health Education honoring Mrs. Prentiss who, in 1936, donated her previous home on Euclid Avenue to the museum, and contributed to its operating fund.

Elisabeth Severance Allen Prentiss died at her home in Cleveland Heights in 1944 and is buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. She left her private art collection to the CMA and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. The works bequeathed to the CMA include paintings by Holbein, Rembrandt, Terburg, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Sarto, Pinturicchio, Luini, Lancret, Gainsborough and Corot. Other works in the bequest are tapestries, French furniture, sculptures by Clodion and Falconet, Chinese porcelains and a group of etchings.

Found in 4 Collections and/or Records: