An original letter from Cincinnati gallerist Burton Closson will accompany the lot.

According to Western art historian Dr. Larry Len Peterson, “In 1881 Farny headed west for the first time to the Standing Rock Agency in the Dakotas to see Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, but unfortunately he had been removed to another area. He then headed up the Missouri River through North Dakota sketching the Sioux and collecting artifacts that he took back to his studio.

“In 1894 Farny traveled to Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory at the invitation of General Nelson Miles and painted Apache Geronimo, Kiowa, and Comanche. President Theodore Roosevelt opined that when seeing Farny’s paintings, ‘I have seen exactly that landscape a hundred times. It is perfect. It is the real West.’ The president also said, ‘Farny, the nation owes you a great debt. It does not realize it now but it will some day. You are preserving for future generations phases of American history that are rapidly passing away.’

“With the West tamed by 1890, Farny concentrated on fine art painting in his studio in Cincinnati, especially of Great Plains Indians. He recalled, ‘The plains, the buttes, the whole country and its people are fuller of material for the artist than any country in Europe.’”

PROVENANCE
University Club of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York
Private collection, Wyoming

EXHIBITED
Henry F. Farny: Exhibition in Honor of the Nation’s Bicentennial, Indian Hill Historical Museum Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1975

LITERATURE
Henry F. Farny: Exhibition in Honor of the Nation’s Bicentennial, Indian Hill Historical Museum Association, 1975, no. 72, illustrated
The Kennedy Quarterly, vol. XVI, no. 4, 1979, p. 218, illustrated