Henry François Farny

Closson's, Cincinnati, Ohio
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sawyer, Jr., Cincinnati (acquired from the above)
By descent in the family to the present owner

Generally in good condition.
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In 1894 Henry Farny, a fine artist and illustrator whose works had appeared in Harper’s Weekly and Century Magazine, took his last trip into the American West.  In that year he travelled to a Kiowa and Comanche reservation near Fort Still, Oklahoma at the invitation of American General Nelson Miles.  In addition to the Kiowa and Comanche inhabitants, the reservation was home to a number of members of the Apache tribe, including the famed Indian warrior Geronimo, who fought against, and eventually surrendered to, General Miles at Fort Bowie, Arizona in 1886 (Robert Utley, Geronimo, New Haven, 2012, p. 218).  During the trip, Farny made sketches and took photographs that he later used in his studio in Cincinnati to create finished paintings such as Dangerous Ground.

Dangerous Ground dates from one of the artist’s most creative periods, and belongs to a series of works featuring Apache subjects, especially ambush scenes, that are executed with his celebrated attention to detail, dramatic use of light and dynamic compositional elements.  The viewer is directly engaged by the Apache warrior, the antagonist of the drama, who is dressed in a traditional white shirt and set in sharp contrast to the dark rocks of the shaded slope.  The figure’s necklace, face paint and bandana are characteristic of what Farny would have seen during his trip to Fort Still or observed in period photographs documenting Geronimo and members of his band (Fig. 1).  The repeating rifle, which featured prominently in the Apache Wars, creates tension in the composition by forming a rightward sloping diagonal in opposition to the matrix of leftward sloping lines.  Geronimo himself is known to have fought with a Winchester Model 1876 .45 caliber Cavalry carbine, which he surrendered to General Miles, and is currently in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. (nmai.si.edu).

Dangerous Ground exhibits Farny’s distinctive use of intersecting picture planes and horizon lines, which are partially a product of his reliance on photographs and sketches and his interest in the compositional techniques employed in Japanese print making (Denny Carter, Henry Farny, New York, 1978, p. 32).  These strong lines direct the viewer’s gaze throughout the narrative and contribute to the dynamic and suspenseful scene unfolding before their eyes.  The viewer is led from the paintings high horizon line down to the Apache warrior via dramatic angles, then to the lower right where, below the cliff face, the secondary character of this scene is revealed.  A loosely rendered rifle, similar to the Apache’s, lies over the lap of the approaching cowboy, the protagonist, who is painted in Farny’s distinctive pastel palette and bathed in light.  He is out in the open - on dangerous ground - and seemingly unaware of what might lie ahead.   The narrative of the painting, and the emotional involvement of the viewer, is heightened by the positioning of the main characters on separate planes and in strikingly different color values.

The subject, palette, tone and compositional elements in Dangerous Ground were reexamined by Farny throughout his career, including in Apache Indians in the Mountains (Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio) and An Apache Ambush (Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio), and are among the hallmarks for which Henry Farny’s work was and continues to be celebrated.