HAMILTON AUCTION GALLERIES

            Born from England, Thomas Charles Farrer grew up in the artistic company of the extraordinary Pre-Raphaelites, men like Daniel Rossetti, Frederic Leighton, Ford Maddox Brown, William Holman Hunt and John Ruskin. The most famous example of that group is the hauntingly magnificent, “Death of Ophelia” by John Everett Millais (col. Tate Gallery, London, UK). The English Pre-Raphaelites painted allegorical scenes set amidst extraordinarily detailed landscapes. Farrer picked up that precise draughtmanship from Ruskin at the Working Men’s College of London from 1854 to 1858.

            In 1859 Farrer brought that exacting eye for detail with him when he crossed the Atlantic, eventually settling in Brooklyn, NY. Within a year or two he was an instructor of drawing at the Cooper Union, a position he held until 1865. While living in Brooklyn in 1863 he helped found the Association for Truth in Art, now known as the American Pre-Raphaelites. This group differed from their predecessors in that the landscape was of paramount concern as opposed to the English obsession with the figure. Thomas C. Farrer alone of the American group consistently used the human figure in his compositions. The American Pre-Raphaelites differed from their Hudson River School contemporaries in that their brushwork was so tight in its detail that it was an end unto itself, to manipulate the truths of nature otherwise constituted heresy. [1] Other members were Henry Farrer, John William Hill, John Henry Hill, Henry Roderick Newman, Charles Herbert Moore and William Trost Richards. Though as a functioning group they did not exhibit together for very long, the body of work produced while members was of such stellar quality that the Brooklyn Museum organized a show of this group, The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites. The show was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the spring and summer of 1985.