Farrer was born in London, but immigrated to the United States in 1863. His older brother, Thomas was associated with and influenced by John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Henry was clearly similarly inspired. He spent most of his adult life in America, but his interpretation of the American landscape emerges from a distinctly Pre-Raphaelite vocabulary of careful observation and recording of the natural world. Henry Farrer was a key figure in the etching revival in America which followed directly upon that in the United Kingdom.
Although the first meeting of the New York Etching Club in 1877 was in the studio of J. D. Smillie, the meetings soon moved their regular venue to the studio of Henry Farrer, one of the club's co-founders and most active members. Etchings were printed on a press built by Farrer himself. His moody landscapes and seascapes are intensely worked, deeply bitten, and often almost impenetrably dark with cross-hatched lines.
