James Farrington Gookins  

(Dec. 30, 1840-May 23, 1904). James Farrington Gookins was born in Terre Haute, Indiana to Samuel Barnes Gookins, an attorney and judge, and Mary Caroline Osborn Gookins. He had three brothers and one sister. In 1860, Gookins was among a group of young men in Terre Haute who formed a debating and literary society. They invited American poet, artist, and journalist Bayard Taylor to lecture at a local high school which sparked Gookins’ interest in art. That same year, Gookins began painting and maintained a lasting friendship with Taylor. The Indianapolis Arts Society displayed his artwork in a show at Indianapolis arts patron Herman Lieber’s Art Emporium (see H. Lieber Company). Gookins immediately enrolled at Wabash College where he was editor of the Wabash Magazine until the Civil War interrupted his studies.   

Gookins enlisted and served as a private with the 11th Indiana Infantry Regiment under General Lewis (Lew) Wallace for three months. Severe wounds and ill health cut Gookins’ service short. However, he documented war scenes during those few months of service in two sketches which were published in Harper’s Weekly.    

After his discharge from service, Gookins moved to Cincinnati where he studied with American painter James H. Beard. Here, Gookins produced his earliest paintings in the genre of fairy painting. The fairy theme, often inspired by myths, legends, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been investigated in Britain and Germany, but rarely in the U.S.  Gookins, along with sculptor John Ferguson Weir and painter Annette Bishop are considered the only three American artists producing a substantial body of fairy paintings during the 1860s. Only Gookins continued to create work focusing on this imagery. Figures represented within these works were often modeled after family members, close friends or even himself. 

Though Gookins spent the mid-1860s between Terre Haute and Indianapolis, he traveled to Virginia as a special correspondent with Union forces while invading the South in the last year of the Civil War. His battle scene sketches were published in Harper’s Weekly during this time. In 1865, he moved to Chicago where he became a key figure in establishing the Chicago Academy of Design, the predecessor of the Art Institute of Chicago.   

During these early years in Chicago, Gookins focused on landscapes yet continued to deepen his fairy painting skills. He traveled west across the Great Plains to the Colorado Rocky Mountains for inspiration. Harper’s Weekly continued to publish his artwork from this period. As a writer, Gookins published an informative essay about his travels to New Mexico with artist and engraver Walter Shirlaw in 1870.  

Upon his return to Terre Haute later in 1870, Gookins married Cora Donnelly. The two immediately traveled to Europe where Gookins studied art. He enrolled at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts on February 8, 1871, and studied under Karl Theodor von Piloty, considered one of the most important painters of realistic history painting. While in Munich, Gookins traveled to the Alps where he gained inspiration for his fairy paintings.  

The couple returned to Chicago in 1873. By this time, Gookins’ landscape and fairy paintings contrasted with the Impressionist and Realist art movements developing in the United States and Europe. Indeed, by the mid 1870s his artistic output declined. In 1877, Gookins returned to Indianapolis where he and John Washington Love established the Indiana School of Art (see Early Art Schools of Central Indiana). Though ambitious in concept, the school struggled to maintain its finances which lead to the school’s closure in 1879.    

In his later years, Gookins worked as a civil engineer and architect on significant projects in Indianapolis and Chicago. In June 1887, Gookins served as secretary for the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission which oversaw the monument’s construction at the center of downtown Indianapolis. In 1888, he became a partner in the Indianapolis real estate firm Eldredge & Gookins. In 1893, he designed a sea wall that enabled the creation of Chicago’s lakefront, which proved pivotal in Daniel Burnham’s design for the World’s Columbian Exposition.   

A decade later, Gookins died suddenly in New York City after being ill for several weeks. He was there to finish work related to the unification of all the street railway systems in Chicago, and the construction of a comprehensive system of subways, harbors, and warehouses. His son, Shirlaw D. Gookins, presented this plan to the Chicago Council Local Transportation Committee in 1911. James Farrington Gookins’ body was cremated and his remains interred at the family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Terre Haute.   

Though not on display, Newfields owns Gookins’ Fairy Marauders painted circa 1870. Additionally, the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute houses one of the largest public collections of his work.  

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