To help folks identify Farny art works, I’ve assembled some of the signatures he used over the years. The three most common, roughly in order of use, were
1) Iconographic-Signature: Farny constructed a symbol built from Fs and an H that could well have been inspired by Chinese or Japanese writing (he did become partial to Japanese art), the earliest his mark appeared is on a drawing of a soldier Farny completed in 1870. It can be found in Carter Denny’s 1978 book on page 17.
2) Cursive Signature: This is a Capital F following by lower case letters in cursive form, with a tail of the Y swishing back under the name,
3) Circumpuncts and Interpuncts: I discuss these signature devices at length in the book’s appendix. For various reasons, Farny’s famous dots on either side of his name (almost like printer marks) and the dot within a circle commonly found on his signature after 1881 have been linked to his time with the Sioux and Zuni. However, research show he was used both circumpuncts and interpuncts in book titles prior to his 1881 trip. Again, I document this in the book. I now believe the influence was more Roman rather than Indian.
So, let’s begin …
1865: Farny’s 1865 Harper sketches of the Turner Festival in Cincinnati include no signatures that I can find, nor did he sign the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition images he completed for the October 19, 1872, issue of Harpers (or here at the Library of Congress), though you can see the signatures of the block engravers.
1867: He signs a landscape painting H.F. Farny 67. I am still looking for other illustrations between 1865-1872. Supposedly, he did some circus posters during this time and, likely, some other piece-meal work for magazines and/or books. Note that these signatures use traditional periods at the base of the letters.
1872: The earliest illustration with a signature that I have found comes from the 1872 book my Dr. William Venable called “A School History of the United States”. This book, as do a few others over the years, contains several different signature styles. I can only guess that he was experimenting with different styles.
For example, on page 163 of the Venable book he used his iconographic signature, which would become pretty common in the later 1870s,
On pages 185 and 198 he uses his initials with periods:
On page 199 he uses his full name in all Caps:
It’s hard to know which illustrations he did when and which of those signature preceded the other. Just because one book was published in 1872 and another in 1873 doesn’t mean that the illustrations were completed in that order. I bring this up, because Farny completed another series of sketches for Dr. Venable, this time for the book “The School Stage”, published in 1873, in which the most unique example of the symbol-signature appears (The Chinese Damsel).
1873: In the School Stage, Farny uses his initials in CAPS twice with periods at the base of the letters.
His more standard iconograph three times:
And, finally, this picture includes a signature-symbol plus a “del” on the lower right of the “The Chinese Damsel” illustration:
The “del.“, which is not a subject I’ve explored very deeply, is “an abbreviation of the Latin delineavit, ‘he/she drew [it]’, [that]sometimes occurs in the lower margin or corner of a print, usually an engraving or an etching, to indicate a particular artist on whose original drawing the print is based.”
What is interesting about the above drawing is that in 1873 he would also use the “del.“for his famous Pork Packing in Cincinnati illustration that was shown at the Vienna’s World Fair as seen below:
It’s also a more cursive-like signature. In later pics, he would occasionally use “del.“, but the use seems random. Again, the signature has periods at the base of the letters (as opposed to interpuncts).
1874: Around this time, a cursive last name begins to mark more of his illustrations. For example, on the cover of the inaugural issue of the 1874 periodical Giglampz, the short-lived satirical series which Farny both illustrated and partially wrote with Lafcadio Hearn, Farny uses a cursive signature.
Between 1874 and 1881: Farny’s illustrations generally fluctuate between the cursive-Farny and the iconograph, though he occasionally deviates to others that we have already seen.
Fast Forward to 1881, Farny makes one, possibly two, trips West in the autumn, the first, if it happened as newspaper reports suggest, would have been to visit the Zuni Tribe at the Arizona and New Mexico northern-border. Farny would have done the work as part of a three-part story by Frank Cushing published in Century Magazine:
1882-12 Frank H. Cushing’s “My Adventures in Zuni”, Part I, pg191, Vol XXV, No2.
1883-02 Frank H. Cushing’s “My Adventures in Zuni”, Part II, pg500, Vol XXV, No4.
1883-05 Frank H. Cushing’s “My Adventures in Zuni”, Part III, pg28, Vol XXVI, No1.
Clearly, when reviewing the article’s images, Farny was experimenting with signatures. And, once again, we don’t know when or in what order he completed the illustrations. Here are some examples that suggest he is working through different ideas during his illustrations for Frank Cushing’s three-part series.
This one (of several examples) is from the 1882/12 Part I article, pg 201, and shows his name with interpuncts midway vertically, rather than periods at the base, around the “FARNY”, but lacking what a circumpunct:
This is one (of several examples) from the 1883/05 Part 3 article, pg45, and shows the bullseye, but no interpuncts:
This one is from the 1882/12 Part I article, pg195, and shows interpuncts and a circumpunct, but the circumpunct landed to the right of the Y-tail:
And, finally, there was this one, used in the 1883-02 Part II article, which became his most common signature in his post 1881 years:
Over the decades that followed Farny remained pretty consistent with the use of his last name and the interpuncts-circumpunct. That said, he occasionally signed whimsically, unless he employed some kind of lost code. Here are some examples that use the random date of 1901:
•FARNY• /1901 (circumpunct underneath)
•FARNY• / •1901• (circumpunct underneath)
•FARNY• (circumpunct underneath) with date to the right or underneath everything
•FARNY•/01 (circumpunct underneath)
•H•F•FARNY•/01 (circumpunct underneath)
•H•F•FARNY•/1901 (circumpunct underneath)
•H•F•FARNY•(circumpunct underneath) with date to the right or underneath everything
•H•F•F• Usually a circumpunct somewhere, sometimes with the date somewhere
Below are some examples of his whimsy: From the 1895 painting Saddling Up:
From the 1904 Marauders Fording a Stream:
Signature 1 from his 1904 “Fording the Stream” at the Gilcrease Art Collection:
Signature 2 from a Fording the Stream sketch from Frick Digital Collection website. Maybe H•F•F signified as sketch?? The undated full sketch is shown below:
Some conjecture on the objects (interpuncts and circumpuncts) that Farny used:
Most experts point to his visit with the Sioux as the origin of the objects. However, According to Professor Herman Ten Kate in 1911, Farny signed his name with the dot, because it represents his Zuni name “Hliakwa” , which translated means “the white shell bead.”
The Professor also notes that Farny did meet with six traveling Zuni elders in the summer of 1882 in Washington D.C.; this meeting has been documented in several other accounts. But, if the dots are the result of his Zuni name, then why was he using the dots after he met with the Sioux in late 1881, but before he met with the Zuni in the Summer of 1882?
For example, Silence, later known as Early Moon, is a painting that we know he finished prior to December of 1881, based on a Cincinnati Commercial Gazette report. The work offers a surprise signature in the form of caps and interpuncts, specifically •H•F•FARNY• then the line below •1881•. That’s certainly an unexpected change!
In January of 1882, The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that Farny had just completed “a water-color of great merit” titled The Toilers of the Plain. A close look at that signature reveals the same signature he used on Silence.
Going back further, he used interpuncts and, on the fifth book, circumpuncts (along with derivations of the circumpunct look) on the June 1879 McGuffey reader covers:
Farny, if his signature devices has specific meanings, seems to have taken those meanings to the grave.
I will update this page when I gain additional signature information. If you have additional insights, opinions, or corrections, please contact management!
