Background
Jouvenal was born in March 1829 in to Francois and Susanna (Giraud) Jouvenal.
Jouvenal was born in March 1829 in to Francois and Susanna (Giraud) Jouvenal.
Studied art, Stuttgart, Germany, circa 1845.
He assisted in the carving of the columns for the United States Capitol, and sculpted many busts of noted Americans. When he was 16 years old, he moved to Stuttgart, capital of the neighboring German state of Württemberg, where he was trained as a sculptor. The Jouvenals moved to , in July 1855, where Jouvenal helped to sculpt the capitals of the columns of the United States Capitol, then undergoing a major expansion.
Jouvenal was dismissed when the American Civil War broke out in April 1861. Jouvenal established himself as a sculptor in the city, and was well known as a portraitist. When the Richmond and Danville Railroad (precursor to the Southern Railway) expanded its headquarters at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in 1886, it commissioned a statue of Benjamin Franklin to stand over the entrance.
Although designed by Ernst Plassman and almost identical to his Franklin statue in New York City, it was carved by Jouvenal. Jouvenal founded a stoneyard and sold funeral monuments from a shop at 10th and D Streets NW in the city. In the 1860s and 1870s, he was the pre-eminent sculptor of funeral monuments in the city.
In the years just prior to his death, Jouvenal was employed by the Architect of the Capitol, and designed sculpture and architectural details for both the Capitol building and the then-unbuilt State, War, and Navy Building. Jacques Jouvenal died of unspecified causes on the morning of March 8, 1905, at his home. He was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Jouvenal's son, Rudolph, was also a sculptor and stonecutter, and was chosen from a field of 225 stonemasons to carve the capstone for the Washington Monument.