One of Farny painting that reached new eyes is the 1892 painting “Mountain Trail“. This painting was featured in a classic PBS Antique Road Show episode, where the owner had no idea of its value or even that it was an actual painting. It proved a both emotional and informative episode of the series, as the woman who owned the painting was genuinely moved by the discovery.
Now, there is some additional background information that can now be added to the painting’s history. For example, “Mountain Trail” was exhibited in late 1892 at the first autumnal exhibit of the Cincinnati Art Club, of which Farny was President at the time and a moving spirit of the club. Several papers briefly mentioned Farny exhibiting the painting (one example November 23, 1892, issue of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, page 6, column 1).
A couple months later in February of 1893 he entered the painting in the Brooklyn Eagle Annual show of American Watercolorists in Brooklyn, New York, where it was titled Mountain Trail–Crow Indians. One reporter noted, “H.F. Farny shows a company of crow-Indians, filing down a mountain trail that is overhung by a mighty cliff. It is a closely painted subject, snapping in its light, without any attempt at tone, and shows the barbarians and the rocks and forest exactly as one may see them in crystalline Western atmosphere.” A February 1893 article from the Cincinnati Post noted that “the painting was attracting unusual attention“.
The next mention of Mountain Trail occurs related to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where Farny entered the Mountain Trail, along with the Sioux Camp (aka With the Pony Herds) and Got Him. According to this reference, Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Book of the Fair: the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, Volume 7 (Chicago and San Francisco: The Bancroft Company, 1893), p. 689, this is the painting known as Mountain Trail:
That painting appears identical to the one that appeared on the PBS episode:
Several months after the end of the Columbian Exposition, the January 17, 1894, Cincinnati Commercial Gazette reported that W. H. Doane had purchased the picture. The typed text below was part of Henry Farny’s papers donated to the Cincinnati Library Museum. It appears to be a typed copy of the article printed from the January 17, 1894, news article. I suspect the “1892” date was likely a guess based on the painting’s date rather than the date of the newspaper article.
On another note, at some juncture a similar painting, possibly a study or a poor copy, was also completed. This image was posted by Artnet following an art auction and accompanied with the claim that it is a Farny painting; it is titled Mountain Trail. The trees and rocks differ slightly from the above images:
