Artists connected to Mamaroneck and Larchmont have created works seen nationally and some we pass by regularly close to home. See below the series box for profiles of four of them.

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Mamaroneck and Larchmont famous artists, sculptors

Norman Rockwell, illustrator, painter

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978): renowned illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell spent many of his early years in Mamaroneck. From 1903-12, his family lived on what is now the 400 block of Prospect Avenue. Norman attended Mamaroneck High School but he was not a good student and left school in 1911 after his junior year to study art. When he was 21, his family moved to New Rochelle.

Norman Rockwell (Library of Congress)

Norman Rockwell (Library of Congress)

Norman Rockwell ‘Spring Song’ Saturday Evening Post cover (Library of Congress)

Norman Rockwell ‘Spring Song’ Saturday Evening Post cover (Library of Congress)

Rockwell recounts tales of growing up in Mamaroneck from when he was 9 or 10 and into his teens in Norman Rockwell: Adventures of an Illustrator.

He and two friends came upon the scene of seeming body snatching from the Delancey family graveyard on Palmer Avenue – ‘Then there came a dull thud from the grave and the two men tossed their shovels onto the pile of dirt and climbed out…Finally, up came a dark moldy brown skull.” It turned out the disinterment had been authorized: ‘The remains of a colonial figure” were being moved “to a more decent graveyard.”

He sang in the St. Thomas Episcopal Church choir, and there was a “wayward girls’ home” nearby, presumably St. Michael’s Home, where the police station is now. “After services on Sunday four or five of us would climb up into the belfry of the church in our black cassocks and white surplices and yell across at the wayward girls, teasing them. One day the sexton locked us in the belfry by mistake. For two hours we shouted and waved our surplices at the passers-by in the street below. They glanced up and waved back. A dog came along and barked at us. Finally someone understood and let us out.”

Young Norman was not a good student “even in art,” he recalled, “but I led the class in, of all things, algebra. Nobody could understand it.” But his “favorite memory of those days is of Miss Julia M. Smith, my eighth-grade teacher….I remember her mostly because she encouraged me in my drawing; every year she asked me to draw a Christmas picture on the blackboard in colored chalks; in history class I drew Revolutionary soldiers and covered wagons; in science, birds, lions, fish, elephants. That meant a lot to me; it was sort of a public recognition of my ability.”

Celebrity worlds collided when Norman was hired to take a wealthy lady and her friend out sketching. The friend was actress Ethel Barrymore, who also lived in Mamaroneck. “So I spent every Saturday afernoon that summer sketching with Ethel Barrymore….and her friend….We would paddle out in a canoe to Hen Island or some deserted beach, where I’d set up the easels in a sheltered spot and show the ladies how to hold the brushes or mix the paints…That must have been a sight – me, a long gawky kid bending over the graceful Ethel Barrymore, guiding her shapely hand across the paper.”

Sources:

  • Norman Rockwell: My Adventures of an Illustrator, as told to Tom Rockwell, originally published 1960, republished 1988.

  • Journal News column on Rockwell’s Mamaroneck home, Sept. 15, 2014.

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Carl Paul Jennewein: noted sculptor’s works adorn public buildings in Washington, D.C., elsewhere

Carl Paul Jennewein (1890-1978) of Larchmont was a classical and art deco sculptor whose works “decorate numerous public and private buildings in Washington, D.C., and major cities in the East,” as well as the Mamaroneck Village War Memorial, designed with his son Paul, according to an obituary in The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains. He also did the Neptune silhouettes that mark the Larchmont village limits.

Carl Jennewein had works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and art museums in Philadelphia, Detroit, Houston and others; the U.S. Justice Department; White House; the House Office Building; as well as at Dudley Gateway at Harvard University. He received over a dozen prizes and awards.

Gallery: Sampling of local and other works by Carl Paul Jennewein (13 photos). Tap the arrows to move through the gallery. Tap a photo to see a larger version. Phone users: Tap the < on your phone to return to the gallery.

He was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and was apprenticed to a Stuttgart Museum sculptor at age 13. A few years later, he came to the United States for an apprenticeship with an architectural sculpture firm in New York City and studied at the Art Students League.

Jennewein lived in Larchmont for nearly 53 years and worked out of a studio in the Van Nest section of the Bronx. In 2011, the corner of Van Nest Avenue and Melville Street where his studio had been was renamed Carl Paul Jennewein Place in his honor.

His daughter, Mimi Jennewein Triggs, was also an artist and painted three of the James Fenimore Cooper-related murals that were displayed for many years in Mamaroneck High School. As a result of construction, her murals and several others were removed and are awaiting restoration and new locations.

Sources:

  • Carl Jennewein obituary, The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains, Feb. 24, 1978.

  • ‘Acclaimed sculptor Carl Jennewein dies,’ The Herald Statesman of Yonkers, Feb. 24, 1978.

  • ‘Obituary: Gina P. Jennewein,’ widow of Carl Jennewein, The Standard-Star of New Rochelle, Aug. 21, 1984.

  • “Van Nest Artist Honored with Street Rename,” Bronx Times, June 15, 2011.

  • List of notable Larchmont and Mamaroneck residents, The Journal News, May 21, 2002.

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Mimi Jennewein, artist, creator of James Fenimore Cooper biographical murals

Emilia Pirra “Mimi” Jennewein Triggs (1920-2006), a painter. Mimi Jennewein graduated from Mamaroneck High School in 1938. She painted three murals focused on novelist James Fenimore Cooper’s life that were installed in 1941 in the cafeteria of what was then Mamaroneck Junior High School, now Mamaroneck High School. A competition at Yale School of Art led to five other murals depicting scenes from Cooper novels. The murals enlightened generations of students until 2022, when they were removed to make way for a renovation. They are to be restored and displayed elsewhere around Mamaroneck.

"The Marriage of Susan Delancey of Mamaroneck in 1811" (Charles Seton photo)

“The Marriage of Susan DeLancey of Mamaroneck in 1811” (7’7”x7’10”) by Mimi Jennewein, in an enhanced image to show its vivid original colors. It is one of three Cooper-themed murals created by Mimi Jennewein for then-Mmaroneck Junior High School., now Mamaroneck HIgh School (“Photo by Charles Seton)

Mimi Jennewein returned to town after graduating from Yale and settled in Larchmont, where she raised her family. Her children ate lunch in the very cafeteria that displayed their mother’s murals. Mimi Jennewein enjoyed a successful career in the arts. Her work can be found at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

More info:

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Warren Chase Merritt: painted library’s Mamaroneck historic murals

Warren Chase Merritt (1897-1968), a painter and muralist, painted four murals depicting key points and personalities in Mamaroneck history: “Purchase of Mamaroneck from the Siwanoys by John Richbell 1661,” “Skirmish on Heathcote Hill in Mamaroneck, 1776,” “Caleb Heathcote Installed as Mayor of New York 1711,” and “Marriage of James Fenimore Cooper to Susan De Lancey 1811.”

The murals are displayed in the Mamaroneck Public Library. Merritt completed two large murals in 1936 and two smaller ones the following year.

‘Skirmish on Heathcote Hill,” one of the murals by Warren Chase Merritt displayed in the Mamaroneck Public Library.

‘Skirmish on Heathcote Hill,” one of the murals by Warren Chase Merritt displayed in the Mamaroneck Public Library.

Merritt grew up in California and initially worked as a commercial artist. He painted his first mural in 1929, the history of paper making and shipping in the San Francisco Bay area, commissioned by the Crown Zellerbch Corporation. He went on to paint murals for Shell Oil Company and Pacific Gas & Electric in addition to the Mamaroneck works. He also did illustrations for many years for Railroad Magazine and California history books. He divided his time between his studio in New York and the West Coast.

Of his New York debut in a one-man show in 1938, The New York Times said, “Merritt’s figures are convincing; his portraits are simple and unaffected; his longshore vignettes are poetical glimpses of reality.”

Sources:

  • Warren Chase Merritt Biography, CaliforniaWatercolor.com.

  • The Story of a Friendly Village, W.G. Fulcher, The Mamaroneck Village Historical Committee, 1946.

  • Among the Solo Shows: Warren Chase Merritt, The New York Times, Oct. 16, 1938.

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Share your tips, info on more Notables

The Mamaroneck-Larchmont Notables project is ongoing. Share suggestions for others to include by emailing the Mamaroneck Historical Society at MamaroneckHistory@gmail.com.

More Mamaroneck and Larchmont notables: Read the other parts of the series

This is one of a series of pages on notable residents of Mamaroneck and Larchmont.

Here are the other parts. Tap the links to go to those pages:

Tap link to return to start of artists list | top of page