Dora de Pedery-Hunt


Dora de Pédery-Hunt, was a Hungarian-Canadian sculptor who designed medals and coins. She was the first Canadian citizen to design an effigy for Queen Elizabeth II.

Life

Dora de Pédery was born in Budapest, Hungary on 16 November 1913 to Attila and Emilia de Pédery. Her father, Attila, was a scientist and a talented pianist, and her mother regularly sang and told stories to Dora and her two sisters. The family focused on music, schooling, and reading, and the children were encouraged to cultivate their ambitions and talents. Dora initially studied physics, medicine and architecture before choosing art as her intended vocation at the age of 24. She trained for six years with scholarships at the Royal School of Fine and Applied Arts in Budapest, studying under Elek Lux, Béla Ohmann, and József Reményi. She received her Masters Diploma in Sculpture in 1943.
After German forces occupied Hungary in March 1944, her family decided to flee west to Helmstedt, Germany, fearing the Soviet advance from the east. Eight months later, they arrived in Hannover, where Attila found work, but it was not long before its fall to the Allied forces.
Five years later, through the sponsorship of Major Thomas S. Chutter and his family, she immigrated to Canada. She arrived in Toronto and worked as a family's live-in housekeeper for a year. She then became a high school art teacher, a job for which she often walked eight kilometres. She also did odd jobs such as "painting designs on children's furniture, cleaning artists' studios and making Christmas decorations for friends and gift shops."
In 1949, she married Vela Hunt. He was a Hungarian journalist and they knew each other previously in Hannover. They divorced in 1961.
She died from colorectal cancer in Toronto, Ontario on 29 September 2008.

Work

After getting married, de Pédery-Hunt spent the next seven years using her free time to work on her sculpting on her kitchen table. In 1956 she made a large artificial stone portrait of Frances Loring, her friend and a fellow sculptor. She entered the portrait in the CNE art show, where it was seen by Alan Jarvis, who was serving as director of the National Gallery of Canada. Jarvis, who was also a trained professional sculptor, saw the merit of de Pédery-Hunt's piece and played a major role in its purchase for a permanent collection at NGC. Their purchase was her first Canadian sale of sculpture.
Her art turned toward a special interest in making medallions since she often did small-scale sculpting. With Jarvis's encouragement, she applied for Canada Council assistance. She thereafter received a grant in 1958 to study medals displayed in various European galleries, museums, and cathedrals. She decided to focus on the neglected art of medal-making upon her return to Toronto, and her first commission was to make a Canada Council medal for excellence in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. She created a cast bronze medallion that was ten centimetres in diameter in 1961; on it, she was able to portray music, dance, literature, painting, and sculpture.
In 1963, she was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists. She was a founding member of the Canadian Portrait Academy and the Medallic Art Society of Canada. On numerous occasions, she represented Canada as a Delegate to the International Art Medal Federation FIDEM, with which she was affiliated since 1965.
She had various other affiliations: She was elected to the Sculptors Society of Canada in 1953. She was a member of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts since 1967. She was also a member of the Hungarian Society of Applied Art and the Hungarian Women's Fine Art Association.
Her career as an artist also included teaching; she taught sculpture at Toronto's Northern Vocational School from 1949-1960, at the Women's Art Association in 1956, and at the Ontario College of Art in 1957.
She created the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II that was used on Canadian coinage in 1990.
Her medal design of Sir Donald Alexander Smith was used by Canada Post as a six cent postage stamp. Two of her portraits of Dr. Frances Loring are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.
Over the span of her career, she designed over 600 medals. Additionally, she created a series of small bronze sculptures commemorating Canadian heroes and heroines, and many other works which can be viewed in collections in over 70 major museums worldwide.

Royal Canadian Mint coins

Besides the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, various Royal Canadian Mint gold coins with a face value of one hundred dollars were designed.
YearThemeFinishMintageIssue Price
1976Olympic CommemorativeProof650,000$105.00
1976Olympic Commemorative Proof350,000$150.00
1986International Year of PeaceProof76,255$325.00

Notable medallions

de Pédery-Hunt's awards include: