Farny was born in Ribéauville (Haut-Rhin), France, and traveled to America, where he would forge his career, in 1865. He began working as an illustrator in Cincinnati before moving to New York in 1867. He studied in Munich in 1875-76, and there he perfected the exacting technique that characterized his work. Back in America, he headed west in 1881 and, within a decade, began exclusively painting Western scenes.
This evocative, pictorial drawing captures with exquisite detail the stones of the Eastern Colonnade of the Temple of the Urn at Petra in present-day Jordan. The drawing is one of a series produced for Peter Ludlow's 1885 Century Magazine article "A Photographer's Visit to Petra," in which drawings somewhat ironically illustrated the photographer's essay. The table of contents for the journal notes that the illustrations were produced by "Harry Fenn" (the Americanized version of his French name) based on photographs taken during the expedition. The air of adventure is stirred in the dramatic rhetoric of the introductory segment by Thomas W. Ludlow, who claims, "Owing to the difficulty of the journey and the inhospitable and treacherous disposition of the natives, graphically described by our Philadelphia Photographer, few Europeans and Americans have undertaken with success of late years to visit Petra, the Rock City of Seir; hence an air of mystery hands over the place and adds not a little to its attraction."
Cantor, Jay E., former owner.