Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Art of the American West. Henry Farney. A-Z Challenge

              Obsidian Mountain in the Yellowstone. 1897  Henry Farny. (1847-1916)


Wikipedia.  Henry Farny

Henry Francis Farny was born in Alsace, France, the son of a political refugee who emigrated to Pennsylvania when Henry was six years old.  His interest in Native Americans began in childhood because a band of friendly Senecas Indians lived nearby.


In 1859, Henry's family moved to Cincinnati and he began his first job as an apprentice lithographer.  He worked at Harpers' Weekly but realized he needed more art training so he traveled to Germany to study at the Royal Academy in Dusseldorf where he remained for three years.


After returning to Cincinnati, he worked as an illustrator for various magazines, but his interest in Indians never wavered and he began traveling in the West researching and painting scenes of the Plains Indians including portraits of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, other Apaches who were being held by the American Government.  He also illustrated articles by the famed anthropologist, Frank Cushing. (see previous post).


His work, according to the article "Taos and Santa Fe Painters," is in the romantic, realist style, but not overly idealized.  His light is strong, poses candid, and his goal was to preserve the details of a way of life he saw disappearing before his eyes.'"

11 comments:

  1. That painting looks like a photograph. I love it.

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    1. This is one of my favorites. It's beautiful but harsh at the same time. Love the dogs following along and the colors are masterful.

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  2. I love it too. It does preserve a way of life which has totally disappeared. We're still getting the snow of course LOL.

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    1. We still get the snow and might even have some on Thursday. Plants and trees always get confused in Colorado. The painting even feels cold when you look a it.

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  3. Hi Nat - that painting is incredible and really shows the harshness of the land ... I love it - a very clever artist .. cheers Hilary

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  4. Thanks as always, Hilary. Oh I wish I could paint like that!

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  5. I like art that depicts other times. This is a beautiful scene, thanks for featuring it.I don't know much about American west painters, but I do like the fact that they travelled to record this for future generations, like Audubon.

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  6. We had painting then, now we have photographs to mark historic events. It's interesting to me that they somehow knew they were also historians, not just painters, like you said, D.G.

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  7. That's absolutely amazing! To think that is a painting and not a photograph. I can see the passion for our First Nation's people.

    Thank you.

    Gary

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  8. You are very welcome. You can feel the cold when you look at the painting. It is amazing.

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  9. Took me a moment to work out the F but I see you have been using surnames. Nice A to Z using art and nice paintings
    http://spudsdailyphoto.blogspot.co.uk/

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