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JOHN FERY (Austrian/American 1859-1934)

Lake Josephine and Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park

Oil on canvas.

Signed lower right "J. Fery".

Verso also signed and inscribed with size and “Mt. Shasta”.

40"x60".

Estimate $8,000-$12,000

Provenance: Private collection, Minnesota.

John Fery was born in 1859 into a prominent and wealthy Austrian family, and grew up on his father’s estate, located between Linz and Salzburg. He studied art in Vienna with Gripenkerl, in Dusseldorf with Peter Janse, and in Karlsruhe with Schwenlehr.

Fery also studied in Munich. He declined a permanent position at the famous Dusseldorf Academy, preferring to come to the United States to practice his art and to follow his interest in wilderness scenery.

Fery came to American in 1886 and he lived on the Eastern seaboard for about five years. He quickly established himself as a successful painted of American landscape and hunting scenes, living for several years at Lake George and in the Catskill Mountain region, and later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and New Jersey. Around 1890 he returned briefly to Europe.

It appears that the result of his return to Europe was the organization of a hunting party led by Fery, which spent the years 1892 and 1893 traveling through the Midwest and far West United States in search of wilderness scenery and wild game. An undated article from the Milwaukee Journal provides a glimpse of the tour: “John Fery, a native of Hungary (sic), and as such a sportsman of the word’s best meaning, conceived the idea, of organizing a party of lovers of the chase, selected from the European gentry and members of the aristocracy, for hunting trip in the virgin hunting grounds of Northern Rockies of America, which the completion of the Northern Pacific (Railroad) had brought into the lime-light of European notice at that time. A call issued to that effect by Mr. Fery in Hunter’s Journal was soon answered by Count Bleuchar, by Count Zepplin, Harry Meisenback, inventor of the half-tone process, and four other persons who together with Mr. Fery made up a party of eight huntsmen and started for the U.S. in 1893.”

The itinerary of the group included Lake Michigan, New Mexico, Arizona, the Grand Canyon of Colorado, California, Oregon, and Wyoming. Fery published an article recounting his experiences in the European Hunter’s Journal under the title “Eine Jagt in Wyoming.” He led a second expedition to the West in 1895, and these adventures were the beginning of his career as a painter of the Western landscape.

Fery’s greatest patron was the Great Northern Railroad. He was commissioned to do paintings of the scenery along the railroad’s route through the West, particularly in Glacier National Park. He was an important artistic stimulant in the creation of Glacier National Park, just as Moran had been earlier in the creation of Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon of the Colorado Park.

Fery died in Everett, Washington in 1934.