Sally James Farnham

Sally James Farnham was an American sculptor born Ogdensburg, New York November 26, 1869 into a prominent local family.

Born in Ogdensburg, New York November 26, 1869, Sarah “Sally” Welles James raised in a wealthy household surrounded by military and political figures. Her paternal grandfather, Amaziah Bailey James, served as a Congressman from 1877 to 1881, and her father, Colonel Edward C. James, was a Civil War veteran and a noted trial lawyer in New York City. When James was 10 years old her mother died. She soon after traveled the world with her father, who often encouraged her to do various activities that were atypical for young women in the period, such as hunting and horsemanship. Her familiarity with these activities later proved useful in her sculpting career.

Her art education began when she was exposed to art as a child while touring the museums of Europe with her family. Their travels would acquaint her with western culture in countries such as France, Norway, and Scotland, as well as with eastern traditions in Japan. At this time she had not discovered her artistic creativity outside of childish drawings and paper-cutout silhouettes. Though she didn’t realize it, her exposure to culture made her sensitive toward the artistic sensibilities she would develop in the future. As she later recalled, those days "were loaded with opportunities to study, to absorb unconsciously the great things in line and form of every nation. In fact this was my real schooling. I was heading for sculpture then, though I didn't know it."

In 1896 she married George Paulding Farnham, a designer at Tiffany & Co. with whom she had three children. Throughout her life,she maintained an energetic social life (which included Hollywood friends like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford) on top of her domestic duties. She began modeling in 1901 while confined to a hospital bed, having been given plasticine clay to amuse herself with. The finished piece, “Spanish Dancer,” was the spark in igniting her passion for sculpture. She later described the experience: “It was as if in some mysterious previous state of existence I had actually been a sculptor and the memory of it was beginning to leak back into my fingers and thumbs.” A family friend, Frederic Remington—who called one of Sally's early works "ugly as sin" yet "full of ginger”—advised her to continue applying herself to the study of sculpture, which she did with the aid of several well-known sculptors, Henry Merwin Shrady, Augustus Lukeman and Frederick Roth.

Her husband was her main supporter and influence at the start of her sculpting education. But Farnham’s success as a sculptor would slowly chip away at their marriage. In 1914 she and Paulding were divorced, leaving Sally as the sole provider for her children.

The ensuing years saw Farnham produce a series of United States Civil War and cemetery monuments in New York and New Jersey . She received many small grants and commissions that would build her reputation as a sculptor over a very short period of time. In 1904 she won a commission to construct Spirit of Liberty, which she made in honor of her father and the men who gave their lives in the Civil War. By 1907, she was regarded as “one of the leading female sculptors working on a heroic scale in America”

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