Since 1903, members of Arts and Letters have delivered commemorative tributes to fellow members who have passed away. These remarks celebrate and reflect on the lives and work of the members being honored and acknowledge their contribution to the arts. A selection of tributes is now available in the digital archive below. As we prepared this archive, we were reminded that these tributes reflect their times, and, in some instances, include terminology and social and moral judgments we do not endorse.
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Carl Paul Jennewein was one of the most distinguished sculptors and medallists of his generation. His work, inspired by the great classical art of Greece and Rome, included large monumental sculpture, both in stone and in bronze, portrait figures, busts, and plaques in bas-relief.
Among the many public buildings and structures that he embellished, the following stand out as the most important and conspicuous: one of the office buildings of the House of Representatives in Washington; the Arlington Memorial Bridge crossing the Potomac, Washington to Virginia; the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Washington Memorial at Valley Forge. This last-named memorial includes an over life-sized portrait statue of the First President. In the White House Jennewein did two distinguished panels in bas-relief. He designed many other memorials placed to adorn public buildings throughout the United States. Paul Jennewein was noted for the many medals he designed over the period of his distinguished career, the most conspicuous being the medal struck to commemorate the opening and dedication of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
He is represented by work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and in several other museums and galleries in the United States.
One of Paul Jennewein's most recent works, a large equestrian statue of Sancho Panza in aluminum, is in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina.
For his work over a long career, Paul Jennewein received many awards and medals. Among them were: the Saltus Medal, 1942; the Elizabeth Watrous Medal, 1960; the 50th Anniversary Medal of the American Legion, 1968; the Medal of Honor of the National Sculpture Society, 1969; and the Daniel Chester French Medal, 1972.
Paul Jennewein was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on December 12, 1890, and came to the United States in 1907; it was here that he studied drawing and sculpture at the Art Students League in New York; he became a citizen in 1915. In 1917 he won the Fellowship in Sculpture at the American Academy in Rome where he remained for two years, a period interrupted by service with the American Red Cross in Italy.
The National Institute of Arts and Letters is proud to have had C. Paul Jennewein on its roster of members for forty-seven years (1931-1978). He died in his eighty-eighth year at his charming home at Larchmont, New York.