The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-03-29

There was a time, not so remote as the
date of the pyramids building, nor vet
OF the Tai Mahal, when the frontier of
art in the United States was in the great
central valley of the continent. Cincin-
natl was the rallying point of the pion-
GERS who established this frontier and
the art club of that city antedates most
similar organizations in the United
States. Nearly all of those who made
up the old club, not few of whom were
afterward to become renowned. are now
dead. Some of the second group have
also gone before, and most of them have
left the scene of their early struggles
and studies, but their work with the
cnlsel ana the brush is seen and admired
Wherever art is known and loved.
Id the 6Os, when the war cloud hung
over the land, Thomas Buchanan Read
hgnts of the club. OF their successors.
Such men as Chase and Fanny and Mos
Ter are leading examples. Chase was a
student with Eaton when Fanny now
the most devoted painter of the Ameri-
can indian, was boy, and before Hen
~ Mosler had won distinction abroad at
the hands of the French government and
been decorated with the red ribbon OF
the legion of honor. Hart and Clevin-
ger We're in the Cincinnati group when
Whitbridge and Wyant were painting
landscapes; so was John TAFT, who was
one OF the first Americana to study at
Dusseldorf, when it was the great ro-
mantle school of art.
c. L. Weber, the veteran portrait
painter, belonged to the pioneer group
and IS now the sole, leonine, uncompro-
missing survivor of that coterie He has
hVed TO see many of his earlier contem-
porarles join the silent majority, and to
see others depart to foreign shores and
distant cities, but he has always dis
dalned to study abroad or TO adopt the
methods of the modern school. Today he
paints on the same lines that he painted
thirty or forty years ago. He employs
a vigorous ana picturesque Vernacular in
speaking of impressionism and the the
cries OF the modern schools. He has lbsen
eminently successful, has won distlnc-
ton, and is one of the few American
artists who have achieved the honor of
ION the line" in the Paris salon without
going abroad.
FARNY'S ART CAREER.
While the men of the formative period
were blazing the way on the art from
tier, ID. +. Farney was playing tag and
other intellectual games with the young
braves and sQuaws of the Senecas at
ms fathers house on the Allegheny. La
ter he drifted to Cincinnati on a lumber
raft. Inc war broke out and young Fanny
made autographs for local firm. Later
he cartooned Jefferson Davis in crinoline
HIS pledSeu the dafperS, and Fdrny did
war work for them. After the war he re-
moved to New York and later Joined
Buchanan Read, then minister to Rome
Still later he drifted about in the stu
dos OF Dusseldorf, Munich and Stras-
burg. In Munich he fell in with Nun
kacsy, and as they were too poor to hire
models they took turns posing for each
other. and so it was that Fanny posed for
the principal figure in The Condemned
Man the great canvas that won fame
and fortune for Munkacsy.
StiIl poor, after three years abroad,
Fanny returned to America in the steer
age. Then he went to Cincinnati and
painted, but no one would buy his pic
lures. After that he drew circus post
ers for Uncle John Robinson, the show
man, and was able to buy three meals a
day and keep a change of linen with the
proceeds. 1t was soon after this that
Fanny was employed by book publish
ing house and made pictures for Har-
vey's Readers. The illustrations made a
hit and the standard school book illus
trations throughout the country was
raised.
Farney tells with great gusto of the
boy over in Covington who /
one day stopped him on the street and
said: Are you Mr.. Shaw"
Nav" interrupted a gamin standing