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HENRY FRANCIS FARNY
(American, born France,1847-1916)
In Days of Peace, 1896
Oil on board
18 ¼ x 10 3/8”
On loan from a private collection L1999.2

Henry Farny was born in France, but he was raised near Warren, Pennsylvania, after his family fled to escape Napoleon’s regime. The young artist was first intrigued by the Seneca Indian tribe in Pennsylvania. In the mid-1860s, Farny worked as an illustrator in the New York office of Harper’s Weekly before traveling to Europe to study landscape painting. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in Cincinnati, where he worked as an illustrator for magazines, children’s books, and circus posters. His best-known work developed following a three-month trip West to the Dakota Territory in 1881, and four more trips (including a 1,000 mile canoe trip down the Missouri River) over the next thirteen years. From sketches made on-site and artifacts gathered in the region, he began to paint extremely detailed and realistic—if romantically idealized—images of the Western landscape and native populations. (It should be noted that, despite Farny’s meticulously realized works, he never witnessed many of the incidents depicted in his paintings.) Though a conservative artist at heart, his European training encouraged him to incorporate new approaches, such as Japanese printing techniques, the use of photographs, and the lighter palette of the Impressionists.