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A sculptor, was born in Creston, Iowa, the son of John Wesley Fry and Ellen Green, Farmers. He may have had early art training, for he placed directly into advanced classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. For the year 1990-1901. He studied sculpture with Lorado Taft and Charles J. Mulligan in day and evening courses. In 1903-1903 he studied sculpture in Paris at the Academic Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with Louis Ernest Barrias and Charles Raoul Verlet. He received an honorable mention at the 1902 Paris Solon. Fry went on to study in Florence in 1904, and from 1905 to 1907 he studied at the new studio school of American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies in Giverny, France. There Fry probably worked on garden and architectural sculptures. Two years later Fry won a third-class medal at the Paris Solon for Indian Chief , a realistic model for the bronze monument to Chief Mahaska that was dedicated on May 12th 1909 at the City Park in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Fry received the commission at the recommendation of sculptor George Bissell. The success of Indian Chief let to Fry being awarded a fellowship to the American Academy in Rome in 1908. He spent three years studying in Italy, Greece and Germany, stating in 1909 that a man should not be sent (on a fellowship) until he no longer has need of a master, and has or is able to map out, work which he will greatly desire to do.. In this the Scholarship is a wonderful aid to him to start his career and prove whether or not he is a sculptor (Valentine and Valentine, p. 47) Fry was elected an associate sculpture member of the National Sculpture Society in New York in 1908 and a member of the Architectural League of New York in 1911. Back in New York in 1912 he completed a bronze boy and turtle for the Burnside Memorial Fountain at the common in Worcester, Massachusetts, that was begun by sculptor Charles Y. Harvey before his death. Architect Henry Bacon designed the sculptures granite pedestal. Prior to the celebrated international art display at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Fry was selected in 1912 as a member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, which organized the show. He had a bronze bust chosen for display (number 171), but for unknown reasons it was not received. He resigned from the group that same year. In 1914 Fry bought a home in Roxbury, Connecticut, but kept a New York studio. That year he was elected associate national academician of the National Academy of Design; he presented an oil portrait by Edmond T. Quinn as a membership requirement. Frys "Maidenhood" (1914), a derivative of archaic Greek sculpture, was awarded a silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. (A cast is in Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina) Fry also produced symbolic decorations for the entrance to the Expositions Festival Hall. He received the commission for the Civil War major Clarence T. Barrett Memorial Fountain (Staten Island, N.Y.), and the life size bronze figure of a Greek warrior holding a spear and shield was dedicated on 11/11/1915. Fry executed a stone memorial to revolutionary war captain Thomas Abby at Enfield congregational Church in Connecticut, with the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White of New York. The memorial was dedicated on November 4th, 1916, and it features a realistic standing figure in a colonial costume that sculptor Daniel Chester French had loaned to Fry. In 1917 Taft spoke of Fry as another of our western men whose career the Art Institute follows with gratified interest in his Scammon Lecture on the Modern Tendencies in Sculpture He praised Frys use of Apollos prose from the Parthenon pediment for the Barrett memorial as a stroke of genius, Indian Chief as A handsome figure most skillfully modeled, Unfinished Figure as graceful and simple as a Tanagra Figurine enlarge to life-size without additions of detail, and Captain Abbey, although less successful, as very decorative. Fry won the Elizabeth N. Waltrous gold medal in 1917 at the National Academy for Unfinished Figure. He enlisted in the U.S. army in 1917 as a private in the Camouflage Corps during World War I, and he served as a liaison officer with the camouflage section of the French army. He returned to the United States in 1919. The Detroit Institute of Arts owns Spartan Mother, created that year. In 1920-1921 Fry produced a bronze monument to revolutionary war soldier and university founder Ira Allen for the University of Vermont in Burlington, The sculpture, unveiled on 6/18/1921, shows a contemplative figure in a simplified realistic style. It was commissioned by James Benjamin Wilbur, a businessman, benefactor, and author of a 1928 biography of Allen. Fry modeled reliefs of The Infantry for pedestal of the General Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated on 4/27,1922. The memorial was a collaborative effort with architect Edward Pearce Casey and sculptors Henry Mervin Shrady and Edmond Amateis. In 1923 Fry was awarded the William M. R. French gold medal by the Art Institute of Chicago for Fortuna Fountain Figure, also shown that year at the Pennsylvania Academy, the National Sculpture Society, and in the latters traveling exhibition. Fry was elected national academician of the National Academy in 1930, and his diploma portrait, a bronze bust of sculptor Gerome Brush completed some twenty years earlier, was presented 1931. One of Frys last projects was a pediment for the Department of Labor and Interstate Commerce Building (now the U.S. customs Building) in Washington, D.C. In 1935 Fry completed the model for Abundance and Industry , a classical female figure pouring fruit from an urn and flanked by rams., which was carved in limestone in 1936 by the John Donnelly company. Other projects included a bronze figure of the Greek goddess Ceres for the dome of the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City; a pediment for the Clark Mausoleum in Los Angeles; and privately owned fountains such as The Dolphin in Mount Kisco, New York, and Au Solsil, un-located. After a distinguished and promising career as a academic sculptor in the first three decades of the twentieth century, little is know of Frys later years. He apparently did not marry, and he lived for a time with sculptor Albert Piouffle in Roxbury, Connecticut. Fry died in Kent, Connecticut.
Susan James-Gadzinski
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