Weinman was sent by his parents to America in 1880 to live with relatives in New York. After serving as an apprentice to Frederick Kaldenberg, a carver of wood and ivory, he realized his artistic ability and, in 1887, enrolled at the Cooper Union. There, in 1889, his talent at ornamental drawing won him the Mitchell Vance Prize. The following year, he was admitted as a pupil of sculptor Philip Martiny and continued his formal training at the Art Students League. While he was at the latter institution, his flair for modeling impressed Augustus Saint-Gaudens who gave the young artist encouragement and advice. Weinman continued to work with various sculptors, including Olin Warner, Daniel C. French, and Charles Niehaus, until the turn of the century.
Weinman's first major commission, won in a competition, was for the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument for Druid Hill Park, Baltimore. The Gen. Alexander Macomb Monument, unveiled in 1908, was his next important public work, executed for the city of Detroit. Several statues of Lincoln followed, one for Lincoln's birthplace in Hodgensville, Kentucky, and another for the rotunda of the Kentucky State capital building at Frankfort.
Besides these monumental pieces and several portrait busts and reliefs, Weinman also executed major allegorical and historical pieces for the St. Louis and San Francisco expositions of 1904 and 1915 respectively. For the former, he displayed a group, The Destiny of the Red Man, which was to bring him some fame. In San Francisco, his fountains Rising Sun and Descending Night were a feature of the Court of the Universe. A number of his other fountain figures are in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina.
As to architectural sculpture, Weinman executed decorative work for New York's Pennsylvania Station, the Bronx County Court House, and the state capital building in Madison, Wisconsin, among others. The pedimental sculpture over the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the National Archives building in Washington was considered by the sculptor to be one of his best works. Other sculptures in Washington executed by Weinman during the 1930s include those done for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Post Office Department buildings.
Weinman became well-known as a medalist and his work in that genre included examples for the American Institute of Architects and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and several coins for the United States government minted in 1916.
He began exhibiting at the National Academy in 1907 when he showed several examples of his medal work. Models for many of his major pieces, including the Macomb Monument and Rising Sun and Descending Night, were shown there over the years. His design for the Academy's J. Sanford Saltus Medal was displayed in the winter of 1919-1920. He won the Academy's Watrous Gold Medal in 1945 for Riders of the Dawn, a fountain designed for Brookgreen Gardens.
Weinman became a U.S. citizen in 1898 and was a member of the Society of American Artists, the American Numismatics Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a president of the National Sculpture Society.
