In 1859, Farny’s family rafted downriver from their
backwoods home to Cincinnati in pursuit of greater opportunities.
Although he was just twelve years old, Farny was already interested
in art. He was first apprenticed to a lithographer and later
became an illustrator for a Cincinnati newspaper. After one
of his illustrations appeared in Harper’s Weekly magazine,
the New York publishing company Harper Brothers hired him as
an illustrator and cartoonist. Farny moved to New York City
to take the job, and changed his name from François Henri
Farny to Henry F. Farny.
Following study and travel in Europe in the late 1860s, Farny
returned to Cincinnati. Unable to find work, he declared that
the city was “about the worst place . . . that a young
artist could choose to make his debut in.” Eventually
he was hired to design circus posters. He also illustrated text
books; in 1879, his successful drawings for a new edition of
the classic McGuffey Reader led to a period of national
prominence.
Farny visited the Far West for the first time in 1881 when
he traveled to the Sioux Indian Agency at Standing Rock, Dakota
Territory, apparently because he wanted to meet Sitting Bull
(Tantanka), the famous Sioux leader being held captive there.
When he arrived at the frontier outpost, he was disappointed
to learn that the prominent prisoner had been moved, but he
remained in the area for several months anyway. As a Cincinnati
newspaper reported, Farny had “struck an artistic bonanza.” Among
the Sioux of the western plains he had found his subject.
Farny was a meticulous and systematic researcher who made
and catalogued numerous photographs, sketched avidly, and collected
artifacts of all kinds, creating a substantial archive of references
and props for his paintings. Once back in Cincinnati, he began
painting the scenes of Native America that would assure his
lasting fame.
Farny’s art has been compared to that of Frederic Remington
and Charles Russell, the unequaled giants of Western art; and
there are obvious links between his work and theirs. However,
another artist to whom Farny can be more closely compared is
Eanger Irving Couse (1866-1936), one of the first artists to
paint in Taos, New Mexico, and a founder of the Taos Society
of Artists. Both Farny and Couse were studio painters who preferred
to paint idealized Native scenes and subjects. Like Farny, Couse
was an excellent photographer and collector who used the material
to create his paintings. Both artists were most interested in
figure painting rather than landscape (which, for them, functioned
as backdrop), and both explored the reflection of light—from
firelight to moonlight—on water and other surfaces.
Farny and Couse did differ in one significant way. Although
they both relied on models, Couse moved to Taos to be near the
two models he painted for decades,, while Farny, satisfied with
the impressions and materials he had gathered during his 1881
trip to the Dakotas, returned to Cincinnati taking his model,
a Sioux man called Ogallala Fire, with him. Ogallala Fire probably
posed for Indians Moving Camp. He also modeled for
other Cincinnati artists and was the janitor for the Cincinnati
Art Club.
Farny traveled west at least three times after 1881. In 1883,
he was present when the Northern Pacific Railway drove the last
spike in its line between Wisconsin and the Pacific Coast, and
in 1884, he and a journalist floated down the Missouri River
from Helena to Fort Benton, Montana, to write and illustrate
an article about the trip for Century magazine. In
1894, he went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to sketch the notorious
Apache chief Geronimo who was imprisoned there. Farny enjoyed
these excursions, but they were not necessary to his success
as a Western artist, for he did not paint the contemporary West.
The Native world that he painted existed at an indefinite time
when Indians still practiced traditional occupations and customs.
Although his paintings were romantic rather than documentary,
Farny was far from indifferent to the deplorable conditions
facing Native Americans. His scenes sometimes were subtle commentaries
on the upheavals that occurred in the wake of White migration
westward and the decades-long Indian Wars. While superficially
serene, many of Farny’s dreamlike paintings convey a vague
sense of unease. For instance, is the man clasping his rifle
in Indians Moving Camp stalwartly confronting the viewer
or calmly contemplating the move ahead? Are he and his companions
being forced to relocate or are they merely following a herd
of meandering buffalo?
While Farny’s symbolism and intentions may be ambiguous,
with his attention to detail and impressionistic rendering of
the landscape, he clearly conveyed a Native American world on
the Great Plains of enduring beauty, dignity, and grace.
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