Charles Farr

Charles Farr was a realist painter, born in 1908 in Birginham, AL. As a young artist in the late 1930s, Farr took part in the Works Progress Administration programs (WPA) in New York City and trained as a restorer of ancient pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Farr took a special interest in the Met’s American painting tradition. Through his study of American artists like Peale, Kensett, and Eakins, Farr became convinced of a unifying character more theoretical than stylistic of an American tradition of realism. He moved to San Francisco after WWII and lived and worked on Potrero Hill until his death.

Charles Griffin Farr was a painter in the American Realist tradition whose oeuvre has not been affected by fad or current, but through a stoic personal sojourn has created an individual painting style which assimilated his appreciation of the past with a sophisticated understanding of modernist theory and aesthetic. His influences range from classical Renaissance through 17th century Dutch painting to contemporary issues and ideas of visual perception. His perception is predicated in careful observation, precise representation and highly-structured compositions, the result of which are masterful, magical, realist paintings endowing the artist’s subjects with a mysterious, supernatural quality that seems to suspend time and space.

Charles Griffin Farr was represented by the Hackett Freedman Gallery in San Francisco until it closed in 2009.