Indian Ink Sketches and Wood blocks: While juggling all the work related to Ye Giglampz, Farny found time to do a series so India ink sketches for engravings. The results receive accolades along with predictions that Farny had a promising career ahead of him.
American Illustrator Felix Darley, who made sketches for works by Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, among others, called Farny’s India ink sketches the best American illustrations he’d seen to date. Given his pedigree, this was no small compliment.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find examples of these works, but there are brief descriptions of them in the article below.
THE FUGITIVES: Also entered into the Exposition was Farny’s “The Fugitives” oil painting. Curiously, the official Expo guide and catalogue included a flattering description of “Farney” (pg VIII). Frank Duveneck is also mentioned, but with less enthusiastic praise. When and where Farny and Duveneck met isn’t clear yet, but they would go on to be life-long friends.
While the painting’s name sounds like something he might have used on a work from his later Indian-themed projects, this was not a western-themed painting at all.
International art collector and critic Parisian Jean-Baptiste Adelphe Groupil, co-founder of what became Couple & Cie, bought just one painting while attending the Cincinnati expo, and that oil painting was Farny’s “The Fugitives”.
