In the December 25, 1881, issue of the Cincinnati Commercial, a reporter mentioned he’d spotted Farny, likely a day or two before Christmas, mailing Christmas cards. The article also noted Farny was carrying a painting he called “Silence”, which depicted a winter scene on the Allegheny Mountains.
In her book,” “Henry Farny”, Denny Carter had guessed it likely represented Western Pennsylvania and the December 25, 1881, excerpt below indicates she was correct.
Silence is dated 1881 and has Farny’s signature with his initials, but no bullseye, suggesting this was completed after his trip(s) West in 1881. This image of Silence come from the Frick digital archives. To view it on the Frick site, go here, then enter the search term “Farny”, then look for “Silence“:
In 1883, The Continent Magazine included Silence in a September 19 article about Cincinnati Art at the Cincinnati Exposition. The image from the magazine is included below:
The article’s author, Will O Bates, about whom I have yet to find any biographical data, made several observations about Farny and his work:
Mr. Farny’s “Silence” is a souvenir of his childhood among the Alleghenies, and, like his distemper picture, “The Hill Behind the Old School-House,” has a fine feeling for the geological skeleton of the land, as well as much of that indefinable sadness characteristic of nature’s twilight moods. (page 360)
Bates later wrote on page 362:
I do not believe, in any city of these United States at the present writing, that there are three men who are doing so much to bring high art down to popular appreciation and enjoyment, to lend the aid of its beautiful radiance to the millions who never enter a picture gallery, than Messrs. Farny, [Alfred] Brennan and [Matt] Morgan. Through his drawings for school-books and the illustrated magazines and weeklies, Mr. Farny has probably educated more eyes into correct art ideas than most young men, at least. To those who know how much an artist sacrifices of his own high ideal life in thus devoting his time and talents to utilitarian purposes, the popular debt of gratitude to such men will not seem small.
One curious side note about Silence: on December 5, 1943, the Cincinnati Enquirer, in Section four, page 5, showed this same painting under the name “Early Moon“:
So, there are three possibilities as I see it. 1) Perhaps someone renamed it? 2) It’s an exactly copy of Silence? Or, 3) it was just a mistake by the paper. I currently have no information on the whereabouts of either Silence or an Early Moon painting.
