James Fairman

Collection of Mr and Mrs Charles Q. Davis, Columbus OH

Sisters ot St Joseph, Toronto, donated by the above in 1904

This resplendent views of Jerusalem belies the outspoken anti-establishment figure, abolitionist, aspiring Congressman, soldier in the American Civil War, artist, and art lecturer that was Colonel James Fairman. Fairman’s father was a Napoleonic officer who had followed General Bernadotte to Sweden, then fled to Scotland when the general turned against Napoleon. James and his brother John were born there, and after their father’s death emigrated to New York with their widowed mother. In 1844 James enrolled at the American Academy of Design, and in 1851 the Great Exhibition attracted him to London in 1851. Here he would have seen the work of the Pre-Raphaelites including William Homan Hunt, whose paintings of the Holy Land may have ignited his interest in the region. At the end of 1871 he was in Palestine, signing the registration book of the American consulate in Jerusalem that December. The fruits of his travels could be seen in the subjects he exhibited in New York the following July, including five views of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, for which he found a ready market among his pious collectors including expatriate Presbyterian Scots in the inland cities of America which he toured as an ‘art lecturer’ to promote his work.