Name/Title
"Caricature of George Julian Zolnay"Description
Caricature of a bespectacled man dressed in an artist's smock, holding his hat behind him, and standing in front of Classical ruins.Artwork Details
Subject Person
George Julian ZolnaySeries
Caricatures of past Arts Club presidents by Clifford Kennedy Berryman.Context
George Julian Zolnay (1863 – 1949)
Sculptor George J. Zolnay became the Arts Club’s second president in 1921. Born in Bucharest of Romanian and Hungarian parentage, he immigrated to the United States in 1892, settling first in New York where he helped found the National Arts Club in 1898. He taught Art at Washington University in St. Louis and at the Art Institute of Indianapolis before moving to Washington, DC in 1913. Over the years, Zolnay produced numerous works, many of which were commissioned public monuments that can be found throughout the country. Locally, he is responsible for the 3-panel frieze representing Academia, Business, and Manual Education over Cardozo High School’s main entrance in DC, for the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial at the University of Virginia, and partially for the Sequoiah statue for the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, which he completed after the original artist, Vinnie Ream Hoxey, died before its completion. The Beethoven bust in the Club’s 2nd floor stairwell hall is one of his works.
Berryman’s caricature of Zolnay shows the sculptor amidst the ruins of the Parthenon, an allusion to Zolnay’s work ornamenting the Parthenon building created for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Source: Max Gilder, intern for the Arts Club during the spring semester of 2021 while a student at the University of Maryland.Made/Created
Artist
Clifford Kennedy BerrymanInscription/Signature/Marks
Type
SignatureLocation
lower right cornerTranscription
C K BerrymanType
LabelLocation
lower left cornerTranscription
George J. Zolnay 1921Type
InscriptionLocation
upper right corner speech bubbleTranscription
"This makes me long for the old Arts Club!"Update Date
August 21, 2025