Garnet Jex

Who was Garnet Jex?

Garnet W. Jex was an American artist and historian. Born in Kent, Ohio, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C., at the age of four. He remained in the Washington area until his death.

Jex enlisted in the U.S. Army in World War I. After the war, he worked as a medical illustrator for the Army Medical Corps for two years and attended the Corcoran College of Art and Design. He earned a B.A. in 1927 and a Master’s degree in 1931, both from George Washington University. While completing his Master’s degree, he worked as an art editor for the journal Nature. Later, Jex was employed as an artist and designer at the United States Public Health Service for 26 years, until his retirement in 1962.

In 1965, Jex authored a watercolor history book of the American Civil War entitled The Upper Potomac in the Civil War : a series of 51 water color paintings.

Jex was highly renowned for his landscape paintings of the Potomac River and the C & O Canal. Although a flood destroyed the canal in 1925, Jex’s works remain as a visual record of the once commercially-important structure.