Henry Farny (American, 1847-1916) Gouache on Paper 

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American Indian and Western Art

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Sep 26, 2014 - Sep 27, 2014

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• Lot Description
  Yarns of a Summer Day

  signed, dated, and artist's bullseye monogram, lower left

  (sight) 11.25 x 15.75 in.

  (with Closson's Gallery, Cincinnati frame) 19 x 23 in.

  1894

   

  LITERATURE

   

  Baltzer, Charles.  1975.  Catalog for the exhibition "Henry Farny", Indian Hill Historical Museum Association.  Plate 76.

   

  Carter, Denny T.  Henry Farny; 1978.  Watson-Guptill Publications, NY, NY.  Plates frontispiece, pg. 35, also illustrated pg. 90.

   

  EXHIBITED

   

  Indian Hill Historical Museum Association, Cincinnati, OH.  1975.

   

  In its vibrant and sweeping view of the Plains, its meticulous brushwork in gouache, and numerous figures going about their daily lives-- uninterrupted-- representative of the nostalgia of the American West that captured the interest of so many in the late 19th century, Yarns of a Summer Day is one of the finest examples of Henry Farny's painting that has ever passed through Cowan's salesroom.  While the work is not monumental in size (so few of Farny's paintings were), it contains every element that made Farny one of the most highly regarded artist's of the American West during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

   

  Unlike his most notable contemporaries, Charles Russell (1864-1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909), Farny usually portrayed the American Indian in a peaceful, idyllic setting, rather than in the climactic moments of conflict between Indians and the whites pushing West.  His work was reminiscent of a time when the inhabitants of the American West were undisturbed.  Instead, Farny was subtle in his narratives, and any sense of conflict was often implied in a title, rather than overtly illustrated.  It is in this vein that Yarns of a Summer Day is titled, suggesting a peaceful time, filled with daily activity.  

   

  Yarns of a Summer Day was executed at the height of Farny's career in 1894.  During that Fall, he made his final trip West, on an invitation from General Nelson Miles (1839-1925) to Fort Sill, where the famed Apache Geronimo was held prisoner.  This work was probably painted before Farny made his way to Oklahoma, perhaps in the summer of 1894, where he was just off of an exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair in the previous year, which greatly contributed to his national popularity.   

   

  Farny had seen firsthand in his travels to the West that American Indian culture was fading quickly.  But he realized that viewers were interested in that culture, and his attempts to capture it from the view of the past were hungrily consumed by collectors back East. In Henry Farny Paints the Far West (2007), Susan Labry Meyn perhaps puts these idyllic scenes best:

   

  By the time that Farny made his first trip West in 1881, the Indian people of the entire Great Plains region, from Texas into Canada, were already greatly impoverished, culturally as well as economically.  These Native Americans had endured nearly a century of pernicious federal policy and more than forty years of punishing war with the U.S. military.  The government's objective was to either civilize or exterminate these proud and brave warriors.

   

  The Indian story that Farny usually chose to tell reflected the lifeways of these Indians during the glorious and earlier days of traditional Plains life, when they had charged across the grasslands hunting buffalo prior to their confinement on remote reservations. (pg. 37).

   

  This painting was purchased directly from the artist, and descended in the same family until the present day.  It has never been offered for sale before.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

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