Artist: Frederick Shrady

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Sculpture: Peter the Fisherman

Year: 1965
Materials: Bronze
Description: 28 feet tall
Location: Plaza

About Frederick Shrady

Frederick Shrady was born in East View, New York, on October 22, 1907. His early life was spent in Westchester County, New York, before attending the Choate School, a highly regarded boarding school in Connecticut. He studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York and the Ecole d’art d’Orleans in Orleans, France, and undertook an apprenticeship under Japanese painter Yasushi Tanaka in Paris. At New College, Oxford University, he studied the history of art and architecture. His extensive travels throughout Europe took him to Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and Albania. In 1931, he moved to Paris to paint full-time. Living in the Montparnasse district, Shrady found himself at the epicenter of the avant-garde. His neighbors included the artists Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, and his own mentor, Andre Derain. Before he turned thirty-three, he had been featured in solo exhibitions across the globe, including Dublin, Paris, Belgrade, London, and New York.

After World War II, during which he served in the Army, he converted to Catholicism and turned to sculpture of a religious nature. In 1959, he purchased the former estate of Edna Ferber in Easton and converted a barn there into a studio. His 28-foot Peter, Fisher of Men, depicting the saint casting a net, was installed in the plaza of Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus in 1969, and the 1975 green bronze figure of Mother Elizabeth Seton, the first American-born saint, stands in the Mother Seton Shrine at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

In 1982 Shrady became the first American artist to be commissioned by a pope. His 12-foot marble statue, Our Lady of Fatima, was presented to Pope John Paul II and resides in the Vatican Gardens. While he was best known for his religious sculptures, Shrady was also commissioned for secular works. His sweeping, 15-foot bronze sculpture outside FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. is engraved with the mantra, “Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity.”

In the final days of his life, Shrady continued to sculpt at his studio on a 140-acre estate formerly owned by the novelist Edna Ferber. At the time he lost his battle with cancer in 1990, he was in the process of completing a bust of poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins.