George Julian Zolnay (Gyula Zsolnay) (July 4, 1863 – May 1, 1949) was a Romanian, Hungarian, and American sculptor called the "sculptor of the Confederacy".
Early years
Zolnay was born on July 4, 1863, to Ignác (Ignatius) Zolnay, originally from Pécs, and Carolina Vagán Zolnay, from Bucharest. His father Ignác had served with General Józef Bem during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. By 1849 Ignác, co-owner of the famed Zsolnay Porcelaine Manufacturer, had sold his interest and moved from Pécs, Kingdom of Hungary, to Bucharest, Wallachia. Zolnay's birthplace is usually identified as Bucharest, though some mention Pécs.
He grew up in Bucharest, attending the Saint Sava National College. As George's talents in the arts were noticed in his childhood, he initially wanted to become a violinist, attaining a scholarship at the Music and Drama Conservatory; his father's disapproval kept him from violin, but he did learn to appreciate art. At age twenty he assumed a brief career as a cadet in the Romanian cavalry regiments, where he modelled many military objects and individuals. At his father's wish, he entered the civil service upon leaving the military, but decided to learn sculpting on the side.
His father finally impressed by one of his sculptures, Zolnay studied and graduated from the National School of Fine Arts of Bucharest where he learned under Karl Stork. He then went to Paris, France to study under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Alexandre Falguière, as then to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna where he studied under Edmund von Hellmer and Carl Kundmann, and received a Grand Prix for his work. His high ranking at Vienna gave him a grant for his own art studio, and a cash allowance.
"Sculptor of the Confederacy"
Zolnay came to the United States in 1893 to attend the World's Columbian Exposition, at the behest of the U.S. consul-general to Vienna. He intended to return home, but chose New York City for his new home in 1894, eventually becoming an American citizen.
He became a favorite sculptor of Southerners in 1897 after he sculpted a statue of Sam Davis, a Confederate spy who was executed; as no pictures of Davis survived, Zolnay based the likeness on Davis' relatives. Zolnay's numerous creations, scattered throughout the South, earned him the name "Sculptor of the Confederacy."
In 1898 Zolnay was one of the eight men led by Charles DeKay who founded the National Arts Club, becoming its first vice-president.
Zolnay was first described as the "sculptor of the Confederacy" as early as July 1899, in a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about the Jefferson Davis memorial. He'd already "received so many commissions from the South" to earn the name, which was repeated in subsequent coverage. The widow of Jefferson Davis and former First Lady of the Confederate States, Varina Davis, had moved to New York City that same year, and was quoted in the article with kind words for Zolnay, with whom she'd collaborated for six months on the statue. For verisimilitude, she'd loaned Zolnay the clothes in which Davis had been captured.
Family sources and Zolnay's biographer describe his friendship with Varina Davis, and access to the social circle she'd built in New York City, as the foundation of a whole phase of his American career, his "Confederate Period", from 1899 to 1923.
St. Louis, Washington, D.C.
In 1903 Zolnay moved to St. Louis to head the sculpture department of the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, taking the place of Robert P. Bringhurst, and teaching there several years while continuing to pursue commissions, many in the south. Among Zolnay's students in St. Louis were Caroline Risque, Nancy Coonsman, and Adele Schulenburg Gleeson. As of November 19, 1903, Zolnay was the instructor of modeling at the school, curator of sculpture in its associated Museum of Fine Arts, and had just been appointed to the three-man board overseeing the Art Department at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a role in which he would report to Halsey Ives, who had founded the school 20 years prior. Zolnay also contributed two significant figures for the Transportation Building at the fair.
In the same years Zolnay and his studio assistants received a large commission for the two eight-ton lion and tiger, to be placed on top of 40-foot columns, flanking the Delmar road entrance to newly-founded University City, Missouri, an inner suburb developed in parallel with the 1904 fair. Their client was the founder and first mayor of U. City, promoter and publisher Edward Gardner Lewis.