CINCINNATI.- The Taft Museum of Art will present Henry Farny: A Western View, October 13 through December 10. Native American Indian life in the American West inspired 19th-century Cincinnati artist Henry Farny (1847–1916). He painted Indians hunting, trekking, and camping in stunning wilderness landscapes at a time when the American frontier was already disappearing and tribes were mostly confined to reservations. Farny singled out the exotic aspects of the legendary West but also highlighted the Indians’ dignity and harmony with nature.

A Western View, a selection of five of Farny’s nostalgic and luminous pictures, is timed to coincide at the Taft Museum of Art with a larger exhibition of contemporary art, Michael Scott: Farny Fables, in which the living artist Scott refers frequently to Farny’s body of work.

Farny was one of the most important painter-illustrators of native Americans during the late 19th century. He worked in Cincinnati as a freelance draftsman, then studied painting in Europe. In August 1881, he made his first trip to the Dakota Territory. The photographs, watercolor portrait sketches, and Sioux clothing and artifacts he brought back with him from this initial trip to the West influenced his work throughout his career.