Henry Farrer was an important American Pre-Raphaelite artist, well known for landscapes and still lifes in watercolor, oil, and etching. He was the younger brother of Thomas Charles Farrer, the foremost champion of the aesthetic dogma of John Ruskin in America at mid-century. Following the lead of his brother, who first came to the United States in the late 1850s, Henry Farrer immigrated to this country at age nineteen and established a studio in New York.

By the late 1860s he was espousing Ruskinian principles, which are evident in his meticulous watercolor studies of fruits and flowers. Part of a wave of American artists dedicated to exploring the watercolor medium in the 1860s, Farrer was a founder in 1866 of the American Society of Painters in Water Color. In 1877 he participated in the founding of the New York Etching Club and became the president of this organization in 1881. Farrer established a studio in New York's Tenth Street Studio Building in the 1880s. The influence of other residents of this prominent artists' building, such as William Merritt Chase, may have encouraged him to develop a more painterly style.

From about 1887 until his death in 1903, Farrer lived in Brooklyn.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton