John Fery

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Landscape with Fallow Deers , painting by John Fery.

John Fery , born as Johann Fery (born March 25, 1859 in Straßwalchen , Austria-Hungary, † September 10, 1934 in Everett (Washington) , USA), was an American landscape painter of Austrian origin.

Life

Family and origin

John Fery was born as Johann Fery in Straßwalchen (Salzburg). The family was - as the surname suggests - probably originally of Hungarian origin (his father was born in Bohemia, however), the mother Maria, nee. Illyes, in any case, came from the Hungarian part of the country. In censuses in the United States, Fery gave his origins once as German and once as Hungarian. There is some evidence that Fery spent at least part of his youth in Pressburg (now Bratislava), which at the time belonged to the Hungarian part of the empire.

Artistic career

Although Fery variously claimed to have attended art academies in Austria-Hungary and the German Reich, no evidence has been found for this so far and there are some indications that he did not go through an academic art training.

Family and emigration

Fery probably married the Swiss Mary Rose Kraemer (that is the name in US documents - originally possibly Rosa Maria Krämer) in the early 1880s. In 1886 the couple lived on Lake Ammersee in Bavaria, and that is where their first child, daughter Fiametta, was born. In the same year the young family emigrated to the United States, and the second child, daughter Lucienne, was born in Ohio in 1888 .

The exact whereabouts of Ferys in his early years in the USA are not known; there is conflicting information on this and it is possible that the family has repeatedly changed residence. Fery first traveled to the American West in 1890 at the latest, and between 1891 and 1897 he probably also traveled back to Europe twice - presumably to attract wealthy tourists there for hunting trips to the USA. There is evidence that at least in the years 1893 and 1895 he led European hunters on tours through the American West. An essay by Fery on this was published in 1894 under the title A Hunt in Wyoming .

For the year 1890 Fery is recorded in Duluth (Minnesota) , where on March 16 his youngest child, the son Carl was born. In the late 1890s, he stayed at Jackson Lake in the US state of Wyoming . In 1902 he is recorded in Morristown (New Jersey) , and from 1903 he lived in Milwaukee and then from 1911 in St. Paul , in the state of Wisconsin . It is recorded in Utah between around 1918 and 1923 , then lived again in Milwaukee until 1929 and finally moved to Washington State in 1929 , where his wife died in Seattle in 1930 and he died in Everett (Washington) in 1934 .

It is not certain whether Fery ever became a citizen of the United States because, although he said so in censuses, no relevant documents have yet been found.

Artistic career

Fery mainly emerged as a landscape painter . Works from the time before his emigration to the USA have probably not survived (only two pictures are known that show European motifs, but may have been made in the USA). In the USA, his most important customer was the Great Northern Railway , on whose behalf he designed numerous, often large-format landscapes that were hung in train stations and elsewhere and advertised to travel the American west by rail.

Fery's paintings are characterized by a rather crude painting technique, and most of the works were arguably completed in a relatively short time. More than 150 of his works can still be traced today, and many of them know what landscape they represent. Over half of the surviving paintings show landscape scenes from the Rocky Mountains . In some paintings there are also depictions of animals. There are also examples of architectural painting.

Fery's works in collections

Fery's works include a. in the following collections:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter C. Merrill: John Fery, Artist of the Rockies
  2. ^ Peter C. Merrill: German Immigrant Artists in America. A Biographical Dictionary, Lanham (Maryland) and Folkestone (UK), 1997, pp. 58f.
  3. ↑ Archives for Natural History, Volume 62, Part 2
  4. ^ "John Fery, Artist of the Rockies," by Peter C. Merrill. First published in Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal , (1994, 66: 1 & 2: 2, 75) and then in: Sommer, Mattox, McDonald and Müller (eds.): German American Painters in Wisconsin: Fifteen Biographical Essays, Stuttgart , Academic Publishing House, 1997. [1] .
  5. ^ Minnesota Museum of Art, Iron Horse West: A Bicentennial Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Selected from a Collection Acquired by Burlington Northern Over the Past Century, St. Paul, Minnesota Museum of Art, 1976, pp. 17-23.
personal data
SURNAME Fery, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fery, Johann (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landscape painter of Austrian origin
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Straßwalchen , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1934
Place of death Everett (Washington) , USA