About

“Henry F. Farny, who died Saturday night, was usually described as an Indian painter. The description was neither correct nor fair to Farny. He was a painter of the West, his landscapes of mountain and river and cloud were the justification for his fame. With Remington, horses and Indians were prime consideration; with Farny they were only incidental to a great object. Farny saw the poetry of the West and put it in his pictures. That is why they, and he, were so successful. Cincinnati will be the poorer for Farny’s death. He was not only a notable painter; he was also a man of tremendously vivid personality. And for his strongly marked individuality, he had a fine strain of broad human kindliness. It was a real privilege to be able to number Farny among one’s friends. (Editor of the Cincinnati Times-Star, Dec 26, 1916).

This non-profit site is a work-in-progress. You will probably encounter textual errors, as my posts were done with haste. I will fix as I encounter them.

The site’s goal is to showcase the wide variety of art created by Artist Henry Farny, 1847-1916, focusing mostly on his drawings, which thus far are rarely discussed in biographies or other media. There are just over 1,000 Farny drawings on this site, found in books, magazines, newspapers, and other sources, along with various paintings. Nearly all were drawn between 1870-1890. The goal has been to trace his illustrations to their originally published source. In a number of cases, the location of the original paintings of some illustrations have been located.

To see a full overview of posts ordered by year, view this page.

Farny’s Life as an Illustrator:
Farny’s illustrations are important. In 1870, He returned from Europe at age 23 to discover that Cincinnatians didn’t want to buy his paintings. In fact, they weren’t that interested in buying many other paintings. Cincinnati’s pocket books, despite the city’s prominence and education and its status as a publishing powerhouse, equal to New York or Boston, were kept tight. Many painters moved from Cincinnati to the East Coast in hopes of more buyers. Some forged successful careers. Farny however, had his mother, sisters, and aunt in Cincinnati. He felt he had to stay, because his mother had lost three boys and two husbands over twenty-five years. He was the last male in their Cincinnati family still alive.

So, instead of leaving, Farny adapted to the situation by becoming a full-time illustrator. In 1873, he earned fame across the country and in Europe for his works. Not only did it ‘pay the bills’, but it also provided him with some unique travel opportunities, experiences and connections he might not otherwise have had. He remained a full-time illustrator into the mid 1880s.

The success of his painting The Captive in late 1885 helped launch his transition from illustrator to painter, as interest in his paintings soared after he won the New York Water Color Exhibition. Subsequently, in 1890, he moved south, across the river to Covington, giving him more uninterrupted painting time. For example, in the years 1886-1889 I have documented 14 paintings by Farny. In 1890 alone he did 14 paintings and the number jumped to 20 in 1891. It climbed from there.

Another Website Goal –The Book:
An ancillary goal of this website is for me to use it as a series of small writing projects to help form my understanding of Farny for my new book about him, Henry Farny, “Prince of Bohemians”. My hope is to correct some of the misinformation about him that persists, across the web, in books, and in museums.

For example, nearly every biography claims his first visit west was in 1881, when in fact his visit west was in 1877. We can also document his first Indian-inspired painting, one done in late 1877, though it was more “study” than a final piece. You can learn more about that 1877 “graves” painting and its derivative works here.

Another story that has been unexplored was a journey he took two years later. Farny joined three friends for a canoe trip down the Alleghany River in 1879, though he only floated from Olean, New York, to Warren, Pennsylvania. Thanks to Farny’s friend Nicholas Longworth, we have a good accounting of that portion of the trip. At one point, while camping along the river, a couple of the local Indians met them in their tent, where Farny became smitten with one young lady named Eliza.

In 1881, he took his well-known trip to Fort Yates to visit the Sioux in October of 1881, shooting 124 photos, and hoping, but failing, to meet Sitting Bull. What surprised me was how short his visit with them really was.

One month prior to the Fort Yates trip, Farny may also may have gone to New Mexico, but the evidence is weak. The next year, in the Summer of 1882, he went to Washington, D.C., and happened to meet six Zuni leaders who had been traveling for several months. He spent up to two weeks with them.

One rarely note event in Farny’s life was his tri in 1883 with the Villard Northern Pacific Last Spike Procession, a favorite memory of his for reasons that will be explained in the book. It took him farther west than previously known, to a number of cities in the Washington and Oregon Territories and as far northwest as Victoria, British Columbia. He was part of a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary, all-expenses-paid trip for more than 300 people from Germany, the UK, and eastern journalists. Farny was just one of two artists on the trip.

In 1884, Farny and Eugene V. Smalley, both working on behalf of Century Magazine, floated the Missouri for roughly 100 miles, a trip that lasted six days (Stubbs Ferry to Fort Benton, Montana); many biographies report the trip as a 1,000 mile canoe trip down the Missouri in 1878, but the distance, the year, and the “canoe” portion of the story can be proven incorrect. After the Missouri trip, Farny also appears to have traveled to Colorado for a week or two, before returning to Cincinnati.

There were other trips west, the last documented one being in 1896. Some bits of information suggest a later trip to the southwest, but I’ve been unable to confirm that. For all his love of the West, his documentable time there is quite limited. He actually spent more time traveling to western Pennsylvania and New York, though his paintings rarely reflect those journeys.

One of the reasons there is misinformation about Farny is that Farny doesn’t appear to have kept a journal or worked with a biographer. He did keep some sketch books, but I only know of a couple and they are in private hands.

Finally, a full-page obituary dated January 21, 1917, in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune has been the principle source of inaccurate information. The book explains all this.

A New Farny Biography:
My decision to write a book on Farny came about in January of 2025 after I was contacted my Supermouche.fr productions in the course a Henry Farny documentary they later completed. The crew contacted me because I am relative of his (he’s my great great grandmother Leonie Wurlitzer’s brother) and they were made aware of me by François Thirion (My Farny book is dedicated to him).

Once I began doing some research on Farny, reviewing many biographies and books, I encountered obvious errors. So, I began pouring over source documents. I spent much of 2025 locating and organizing more than 2,000 pages of newspapers over six decades decades of his life. I’ve also transcribed and translated letters from Farny, both in English and French, that provided more insights into his time in Europe between 1867-1870 and in 1873.

Beyond just correcting dates and erroneous statements, expanding his bio beyond his Indian paintings felt important, as he was heavily involved in the rise of the Cincinnati art world, which was a unique bit of American history in the latter half of the 1800s. This is a little told part of his life that deserves more exposure.

Even the number of paintings he’s done has never been estimated, at least I have encountered no estimates. Based on my research, I can identify 700 paintings by Farny using sources like period newspapers, magazines, library digital archives, auction sites, magazines, books, catalogs, family members and other media. My hope is to add the list to this site with links and pictures, but that will take time.

ABOUT ME:

My Fourth Book:
This will be my fourth book and a companion piece to my previous book, SLAG & The Golden Age of Lead-Silver Ore, which was about another part of my family, the Eilers’ side, from the era in which Farny lived. There are cross-overs between the two, for sure, but SLAG was about mining and smelting and the evolution of the west. It emphasized the cascading boom and busts of western mining over the latter half of the 1800s, while this book will involve art’s interplay with the west and the shift of the West from Cincinnati as a western edge to it becoming more and more easterly, along with the shift from a truly Wild West to a nostalgic West.

If you are a relative of Henry Farny and have letters, illustrations or other things from him to discuss or share, feel free to contact me at d @ deilers.com (remove the spaces around the ‘@’. My father’s cousins and descendants were incredibly helpful in my quest to find information for SLAG and other descendants of the Farny, Wurlitzer, Eilers and Strobel lines have proven as equally helpful on this new journey.

Thanks, David Eilers
Prosser, WA

PS: I have thirty years experience building websites, with my “opus” being eWillys.com (now under a new owner), a site I authored for 18 years that contains 165,000 posts, or an average of 10 uploads every single day, which seems about right.

I also operate Emmaeilers.com, a little website dedicated to my great Aunt Emma Eilers’ art: https://emmaeilers.com.

You can learn more about me and my books at my website: https://www.deilers.com.