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Gift of Farnham bronze to museum adds to growing collection of Remington’s friend’s work

Posted 10/4/11

OGDENSBURG – The Frederic Remington Art Museum has been given a donation of a Sally James Farnham bronze sculpture of Pegasus from the museum’s International Advisory Board Member Frances (Dolly) …

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Gift of Farnham bronze to museum adds to growing collection of Remington’s friend’s work

Posted

OGDENSBURG – The Frederic Remington Art Museum has been given a donation of a Sally James Farnham bronze sculpture of Pegasus from the museum’s International Advisory Board Member Frances (Dolly) Macintyre.

Sally James Farnham (1869-1943) grew up in Ogdensburg, and was an acquaintance of Frederic Remington. Although she had no formal training she went on to be among the foremost sculptors of her day.

Farnham started sculpting as a diversion while a hospital patient. Pegasus, from about 1901, marks the very beginning of the artist's career as a sculptor, and is by far the earliest Farnham work in the museum's collection. Other Franham sculptures on view at the museum include The Madill Grandchildren, Cowboy Fun, Spring in the Jungle, Rain, and sculptural portraits of Ferdinand Foch and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Warren G. Harding.

The diminutive sculpture is inscribed R.B.W. (Roman Bronze Works) and signed S. J. Farnham. Only two casts of Pegasus are known to exist.

Other recent acquisitions of Farnham's work are portraits of violinist Jacha Heifetz and actress Lynn Fontanne.

Farnham's and Remington's careers were intertwined. Farnham began sculpting about six years after Remington, and sought inspiration and advice from him.

Her works Cowboy Fun, Payday, and Paleolithic Woman are inspired by his sculptures. Cowboy Fun was part of Frederic Remington's own collection, and it came to the museum with the rest of the founding collection in Eva Remington's will. After Remington's death in 1909, Farnham aided the foundry Roman Bronze Works in bringing his last two subjects, The Stampede and the large Broncho Buster, to completion.

The museum published a monograph on Sally James Farnham's work in 2005, “Sally James Farnham: The Art of Being an Artist,” written by Peter H. Hassrick.

Building the collection through this gift brings the museum closer to museum goals of mounting a touring exhibition of Farnham's art and establishing a permanent, designated space within the museum to interpret the work of this important American sculptor.

The Frederic Remington Art Museum, 303 Washington Street, Ogdensburg, is dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, preserving and interpreting the art and archives of Frederic Remington, and contains an unmatched collection of his works.

The Museum is open October 16 - May 14, Wednesday -Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm; and May 15 - October 15, Monday -Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm.