Highly regarded and long collected, the American art pottery fashioned by Rookwood and the renderings laid down on canvas by Henry Farny (American, 1847‱916) †both adorned with painterly images of American Indians †played an influential role in shaping the romantic myths of American Indian culture. Fresh from the kiln and easel, these works of art created as much excitement in the late Nineteenth Century as they do in today’s aggressive antiques collecting venues.
Uniquely documenting this phenomenon is the exhibition “Vanishing Frontier: Rookwood, Farny and The American Indian” on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum through January 20. Stunning ceramic portraits from the James J. Gardner collection of Rookwood and exquisite Farny opaque watercolors from the museum’s holdings, as well as private collections, offer a compelling view of the American Indian during the final days of the frontier.
Initially conceived as two separate exhibitions, the Farny paintings and the Rookwood pots complemented one another, and, when combined, completed the story of Cincinnati’s interaction with the Native Americans and settlers of the region. The exhibition is co-curated by Anita Ellis and Susan Labry Meyn.
“Henry Farny Paints The Far West” features 39 historically important paintings, while “Rookwood and The American Indian: Masterpieces From The American Art Pottery Collection of James J. Gardner” presents 52 Rookwood portrait vases.
The Gardner Collection
“Vanishing Frontiers” has already earned accolades as a landmark exhibition. The Gardner portion of the exhibition has achieved status on several fronts, not only as an historically important overview of Rookwood production, but also as the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Rookwood’s American Indian subject matter. The aesthetically pleasing Gardner collection is widely regarded as the foremost collection of Rookwood portrait pottery.
While many will be satisfied merely with the opportunity to view this exquisite selection of pottery, the catalog complements it, delving into deeper subjects. An informative essay by Meyn focuses on the history of the American Indian in Cincinnati from the time of the first settlers through the dawning of the Twentieth Century. Ellis’s essay will be of interest to all Rookwood collectors, as it thoroughly explores the pottery’s fascination with the American Indian. It also presents a comprehensive overview of the activities at Rookwood during this period, and it delves into the economic implications the company faced.
The development of the portrait line and the Rookwood Pottery Company’s strong interest in the American Indian is a rich and intriguing story. Ironically, it innocently began with Farny.
The paths of Farny and Rookwood crossed in 1881, when Rookwood principal Maria Longworth Nichols hired the 15-year-old artist to design the fledgling company’s logo. He ultimately remained in the employ of Rookwood for a year.
During his time at Rookwood, Farny worked on a technique that allowed the transfer of printed images onto pottery. Using this process, Farny decorated four plaques with depictions of American Indians for Rookwood, ultimately marking the first of what would come to be known as the portrait line. The only known example to survive is a portrait of Blackfoot Sioux Indian Chief John Grass emblazoned on a circular buff red clay plaque.
With Farny’s departure from Rookwood came a diminished interest in the Indian portraiture line, until Nichols hired William Taylor Watts in 1883. In tune with the mood of the nation and its desire to identify with and possess art of a distinctly American nature, Watts requested publications and accompanying photographs from the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, D.C., which documented the American Indian.
Rookwood’s initial usage of the materials Watts ordered from Washington can be seen in two vases from 1888, both by Artus Van Briggle. One pot in a standard glaze, the other in a tiger-eye glaze, each is incised with gorgets (a French term for a piece of armor that protects the throat) that the artist presumably copied from the illustrations.
The next known portrait vase appeared on a crucible pitcher made by Van Briggle the following year. A profile of an Indian highlighted by the moon, surrounded by several Indian artifacts, including leather shields, is depicted.
Van Briggle entered the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1892, and studied with Joseph Henry Sharp, considered to be one of the masters of frontier art and Indian subject matter. Van Briggle’s next efforts depicting the American Indian, two plaques from 1893, were “light years apart in quality and expression from his earlier pieces,” according to Ellis, obviously displaying the influences of schooling. Both of the plaques were exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, and proved to be a turning point for the Indian portrait pots produced at Rookwood.
There were 23 Rookwood decorators known to have painted Indian portraits, and, accordingly, the question always looms as to which one was the best. Ellis resorts to a system that places the Indian portraiture artists in three categories based on quality †good, very good and masterful.
“Van Briggle offered the greatest promise, but it went unfulfilled,” writes Ellis. Stricken with tuberculosis, Van Briggle left Rookwood early, relocating for health reasons to the drier climates of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Another artist, Sturgis Laurence, was classified by Ellis as “good,” and Harriet Wilcox was considered “very good.” Olga Reed, William McDonald, Matt Daly and Grace Young are all classified as “masterful.” Young was the most prolific of Rookwood’s Indian portrait decorators, and her compositions are marked by complexity, not only in subject matter but also in technique.
Ellis describes a key element in the success of the Rookwood’s Indian portrait line as capitalizing on “America’s nostalgia” with a frontier and native people that were quickly disappearing from the landscape. The company, while creating the portraits from photographic images depicting Native Americans appearing in their finery, perpetuated a stereotyped image of the American Indian that was branded throughout “white America” and, in part, remains to this day.
Emblematic of the romanticized image of the American Indian is a pillow vase decorated by Adeliza Drake Sehon bearing a likeness of Hollow Horn Bear, 1901. Sehon cropped and embellished a photographic image taken by Frank Albert Rinehart in 1898 at the Omaha Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, Omaha, Neb., transforming the subject into a personalized vision. Using the entire large surface that the “pillow” form offers, the decoration depicts Hollow Horn Bear wearing a large and impressive war bonnet ornamented with ermine tails on the sides. He also sports a breast plate and a fringed and beaded shirt that is further embellished with feathers. As with many of the portraits depicted by Rookwood artists, this warrior casts a mysterious and fierce demeanor as he gazes away from the viewer and into the distance.
A tall, slender vase by legendary Rookwood decorator Grace Young displays the wide variety of poses that the artist was able to successfully depict. Young’s talents allowed her to paint the very young with tenderness and innocence, or the very old with dignity. The 1898 standard glaze vase portrays a full length portrait of Suriap, a brave wearing traditional garments and holding his fringed tobacco pouch. A Ute, the image was copied from a photograph recorded when a delegation traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1868, to appeal for Indian rights. With a fringed shirt, beaded leggings and a colorful sash, the young brave appears peaceful, yet keenly aware of his surroundings and the possibility of imminent danger.
Although unusual subject matter for Rookwood’s portrait line, Young did not hesitate to paint Indians engaged in activity or with their horses, and could create the convincing illusion of depth to a composition with the simple placement of a foot or the turn of a head. One of the most dramatic scenes, presented on a large bulbous pot, depicts two Kiowa braves dressed in traditional Plains clothing on horseback, with shields and holding lances ornamented with feathers.
The standard glaze pot is decorated with unusual painterly qualities and superb imagery copied from a portion of a Rinehart photograph, 1898, taken in Omaha. The image was used on other occasions by the decorator, including a rare Iris glaze plaque executed years later in 1903 that depicts a variation of the scene with the addition of a third brave on horseback.
A highlight of the exhibition is the standard glaze Rookwood vase with copper overlay decorated by Matthew Andrew Daly. The 1899 vase depicts a portrait of Dakota Hunkpapa tribe member Bloody Mouth, copied from an 1872 photograph by Alexander Gardner. The Hunkpapa band was well known, as Sitting Bull was one of the tribe’s legendary leaders.
The applied silvered copper decoration around the neck of the Daly-decorated vase simulates a geometrically decorated gorget with the forms suspended on faux beaded cords. Daly was masterful with his techniques, using dramatic contrasts of light and dark in his compositions and hard-edged brush strokes to define his sitters. The dark standard glaze vase portrays Bloody Mouth as a mysterious warrior in traditional clothing, whose eyes are cast to the left and appear to be gazing far off into the distance. A moody and romantic portrait, it has surely enticed the imaginations of would-be warriors for the past century.
‘Henry Farny Paints The Far West’
Perpetuating a romanticized stereotype of the American Indian †or perhaps a player in its origination †throughout his prolific career, Farny has been regarded for more than a century as one of the most recognizable painters of Nineteenth Century Western genre.
Although living during a period when the American Indians had been repressed, relocated and restricted to reservations, and when their lives had been reconfigured †impoverished culturally and economically †Farny chose not to portray the Native Americans in their saddened state, but instead as the proud people they had once been.
Brought to this country as a child, his father an exile from France, Farny, began life in America with his family as homesteaders farming in western Pennsylvania. It was there that he had his first interactions with Indians, including a memorable meeting with a Seneca named Old Jacob. Perhaps fueling his lifelong admiration of the American Indian, Farny was befriended by the tribe’s elder and taken on visits to the Senecas’ camp where he learned of their way of life and was shown how to make moccasins and bows and arrows.
In 1859, the Farnys relocated to Cincinnati, traveling there via a raft on the Ohio River. Originally a homeland for several tribes of Native Americans, and later a crossroads for displaced Indians, Cincinnati’s heritage was already rich in Indian culture when Farny arrived. The city, a place of constant intrigue for the artist, would become his home for the remainder of his career.
Within a couple years of arriving in Cincinnati, however, tragedy struck the family, first with the death of Farny’s older brother, followed by the passing of his father.
Forced as a teenager to abandon his formal education to support his family, Farny established himself as an artist. Much of his income during this period was derived not from his paintings, however, but from illustrations created for children’s books, travelogues, catalogs, programs and volumes of poetry. Branching out, Farny was soon able to exploit his ability to present captivating illustrations and, with a host of eager periodicals of the day seeking his sensationalized imagery, he was widely published.
Infatuated by his childhood contact with the Indians, Farny traveled West on four different occasions to visit forts and to witness the peoples in their current environment. A turning point in Farny’s career came in 1881 when he was invited by the commander of Fort Yates in North Dakota to visit the outpost. Returning to Cincinnati, loaded with sketches, 124 photographs that he had taken and numerous artifacts, he began to paint.
Prior to this trip, Farny had difficulty supporting himself by means of his painting. Upon his return, the artist began incorporating Indian subject matter into his painting and all that changed. One published report in a local newspaper stated, “Farny has struck an artistic bonanza.”
Employed at Rookwood at the time, Farny resigned and at the same time curtailed his illustrating career, thus allowing him to concentrate exclusively on painting. After he exhibited a watercolor at the American Art Association, the artist’s reputation blossomed. Based on visitors’ votes, he was awarded the top prize from the competition, $250, a hefty sum in the day. Farny’s popularity continued to increase as he painted more Indian subjects; becoming a highly recognizable public figure, he was often invited to lecture throughout the region.
Farny was less concerned with historical accuracy than some predecessors, such as George Catlin, who had traveled among the North American Indians almost half a century earlier and whose aim was to historically record the people, their surroundings and their way of life. Farny was as much a showman as artist.
While his images, said to demonstrate his genius as a storyteller of Indian life, were remarkably lifelike, his depictions were historically inaccurate. Despite this, Farny stands firmly within the ranks of Frederic Remington, Catlin, Karl Bodmer and a host of other famous artists who chronicled the West.
As essayist Meyn points out in the catalog Henry Farny Paints The Far West , “He rarely chose to represent the devastating reality of contemporary Indian life, even in his illustrations.” Delving into the mindset of the artist, Meyn reasons, perhaps it was “because the romantic past was what his public wanted and what they bought.” Whether Farny’s art was merely meant to aesthetically please the buying public, or if it was representative of the idealized image that he wanted to bestow upon these people is unknown.
Ironically, the image for which Farney is best known, “The Captive,” 1885, depicts savagery against a white settler by the American Indians. A gouache and watercolor, the painting was an immediate success, winning awards for Farny when exhibited in 1885. A lone example of the subject matter in the artist’s oeuvre, it remains one of Farny’s most popular paintings. “Perhaps Farny repented of this portrayal of the Indians he admired and cared for,” observes curator Susan Labry Meyn in the exhibition catalog.
Bucolic scenes, such as “Indian Encampment,” a gouache and watercolor with touches of gum, 1890, depict a sense of tranquility among the Plains Indians. The image depicts seated men conversing with an Indian on horseback, along with other tribe members going about their daily business in the background.
“In the Heart of the Rockies,” a gouache executed in 1904, is a pleasing riverfront landscape portraying Indians involved in daily activities with an encampment on the far side of the river set against a mountainous backdrop. “Quintessentially Farny, this painting demonstrates his mastery of northern Plains scenery,” states curator Meyn in the catalog.
“The Ford,” 1899, is another highlight of the exhibition that epitomizes Farny’s brilliance as a landscape painter.
Rookwood and The American Indian: Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James Gardner Collection , with essays by Ellis and Meyn and a foreword by George P. Capture Horse, and Henry Farny Paints The Far West , with essays by Julie Schimmel, Cacile Mear and Meyn, are published by the Cincinnati Art Museum. They are available as softcover books at $30 and $39.95, respectively, at the museum bookstore, http://cincinnatiartmuseum.stores.yahoo.net.
The museum is at 593 Eden Park Drive. For information, 513-639-2995 or www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org .
