Over the Waves

Over the Waves was created in reaction to the demand for garden sculpture in the 1920s. The present work depicts Taras, the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, riding a dolphin as he escapes a shipwreck. Other casts of this size reside in the collections of the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia, and Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida.

Carl Paul Jennewein was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1890, emigrating to the United States in 1913, where he became a naturalized American citizen.  In 1916, he was awarded the Prix de Rome award for sculpture at the American Academy, prompting him to study art in Italy before returning to New York. Jennewein’s expansive oeuvre is widely represented on architecture and in museum collections throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the White House Collection in Washington, D.C. Jennewein maintained ties to Germany in the 1930s, where his works were exhibited in the Nazi-sponsored Great German Art Exhibitions (Grosse Deutsche Kunstaustellung) of 1937, 1938 and 1939. Jennewein held a studio at 538 Van Nest Avenue in the Bronx, New York for over fifty years. In 2011, the section between Melville and Van Buren Street was renamed Carl Jennewein Place in honor of his time in the area.