“After business hours and on holidays, I taught myself painting. I have never taken a lesson in drawing, in painting, or in sculpture, in my life. I joined the Bronx Zoölogical Society, that I might the better study animals, and it was at these gardens that I made the sketches for my buffalo and moose.”
Mr. Shrady taught himself the art of mixing oils, and then, in spare hours, called on William H. Beard, at his studio, for the delineator of “The Bulls and Bears of Wall Street” to criticise his sketches. Once Mr. Beard said, prophetically, “Some day you will forsake all for art.”
A PET DOG HIS FIRST PAINTING.
The young artist had, at his home, a fox-terrier, of which he was very fond. He painted a picture of the dog, and his wife, thinking it an excellent piece of work, offered it clandestinely for exhibition at the National Academy of Design. It was accepted. Great was his astonishment when he recognized it there. It was sold for fifty dollars. His next serious attempt was caused by a little rivalry. His sister brought from abroad an expensive painting of some French kittens. He instantly took a dislike to the kittens, and said he would paint her some Angora ones. To make satisfactory sketches, he carried a sketch-book in his pocket, on his walks to and from his office, pausing on the pavements before the different fanciers’ windows to sketch the kittens within. This picture was also accepted by the National Academy of Design. But he refused an offer to sell it, as he had promised it to his sister, Mrs. Gould, for a Christmas present.
“It was on account of the almost impossible feat of getting colorings at night,” he said, “that I turned to modeling in clay. I wanted to do something to improve as well as amuse me. I modeled a battery going into action, but did not finish it till persuaded to do so by Alvin S. Southworth, a special correspondent of a New York paper in the Crimean War, and friend of my father, Dr. Shrady. It was to gratify him that I finished it. A photograph of it, reproduced in ‘The Journalist,’ attracted a gentleman in the employ of the firm of Theodore B. Starr. He called upon me, and encouraged me to have it made in Russian bronze. That house purchased it, and advised me to enter the field, as they saw prospects for American military pieces.”
Mr. Shrady sketched the gun-carriage and harness for his battery in the Seventh Regiment armory, to which regiment he has belonged for seven years; and his own saddle horse was his model for the horses of the battery.
One day Carl Bitter, the sculptor, dropped in at Starr’s, while Mr. Shrady was there. He noticed the small bronzes,—the buffalo and the moose. “I think we can use them at the Buffalo Exposition,” he said. Mr. Bitter offered the sculptor the use of his studio, in Hoboken, and, in six weeks, by rising at half past five in the morning, and working ten hours a day, he enlarged his buffalo to eight feet in height, and his moose, a larger animal, to nine feet. Then glue molds were taken of both of them, with the greatest care.
“I had never enlarged, or worked in plaster of Paris before,” said Mr. Shrady. “They gave me the tools and plaster, and told me to go to work. I didn’t know how to proceed, at first, but eventually learned all right. I think I could do such work with more ease now,” he added, “for that was practical experience I could not get in an art school.”
Since then, Mr. Shrady has made a realistic cavalry piece, “Saving the Colors,”—of two horsemen, one shot and falling, and the other snatching the colors; also, “The Empty Saddle,”—of a cavalry horse, saddled and bridled, and quietly grazing at a distance from the scene of the death of his rider. This was exhibited at the Academy of American Artists. The Academy of Fine Arts, of Philadelphia, requested Mr. Shrady to exhibit at its exhibition in January, 1902.