Henry Merwin Shrady

Henry Merwin Shrady (1871-1922) was one of the most talented American sculptors of the turn of the twentieth century, whose accomplished equestrian and animal sculptures established him as a leading practitioner of the American Beaux-Arts tradition. The son of a successful and well-known physician, Shrady was two years into his training to become a lawyer when an onset of typhoid fever forced his withdrawal from studies. During the years of his convalescence he took up drawing and watercolor, concentrating on household pets and the animals he observed firsthand at the Bronx Zoo. This unlikely path from law school to sculpture produced one of the most distinctive American artistic careers of his generation.

An early equestrian group, Artillery Going Into Action, produced between 1898 and 1899, caught the attention of the New York jeweler and bronze founder Theodore B. Starr and of the American sculptor Karl Bitter, who encouraged Shrady to enlarge his models Monarch of the Plains, produced in 1899, and Bull Moose for inclusion in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Both of these models were among the earliest examples cast by the lost-wax casting process, a technique pioneered at Roman Bronze Works in New York only a decade earlier. Impressed by the superb modeling and quality of casting achieved through the new process, Frederick Remington sought to employ it himself, casting his own model The Northerner at Roman Bronze Works in 1900. Remington cast his sculptures exclusively in lost wax for the remainder of his career.

Shrady's first major public commission was an equestrian statue of George Washington at Valley Forge, produced in 1901 for Brooklyn's Continental Army Plaza. This important work won him high praise among America's most notable sculptors, including Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial. Other major commissions followed, including the monumental General Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C., one of the most ambitious American public sculptural projects of its era.

Shrady's early studies in biology and anatomy, together with his intimate knowledge of the musculature of horses and his concentration on the academic study of equine anatomy, quickly propelled him to become one of America's finest Animalier sculptors. His pieces are held today in significant American museum collections and remain visible in the public spaces of American cities.