Adolph Alexander Weinman (German, American, 1870 to 1952)
Adolph Alexander Weinman emigrated from Germany to the United States as a child. He studied in New York at Cooper Union and the Art Students League and under sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Philip Martiny. He later assisted Charles Niehaus, Olin Warner and Daniel Chester French. Both an architectural sculptor and a medalist, he is celebrated as the designer of the “Walking Liberty” fifty-cent piece and the “Mercury” ten-cent piece. His architectural work can be found on public and government buildings across the United States. Weinman was a favorite of the architects McKim, Mead, and White. The tragic destruction of the firm’s Pennsylvania Railway Station in New York in 1966 is epitomized by a famous photograph of one of Weinman’s angels lying in a New Jersey landfill. He was a member of the National Sculpture Society.
Information courtesy of Rago Arts, May 2007.