Born in Ogdensburg, New York November 26, 1869, Sarah “Sally” Welles James raised in a wealthy household surrounded by military and political figures.

[2] 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.”[1] A family friend, Frederic Remington — who called one of Sally's early works "ugly as sin" yet "full of ginger”[1]—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.

The ensuing years saw Farnham produce a series of United States Civil War and cemetery monuments in New York and New Jersey .

By 1907, she was regarded as “one of the leading female sculptors working on a heroic scale in America” [3] In 1910, she was commissioned to create a frieze for the Pan American Union building in Washington D.C.

This work, called the Frieze of Discoverers, contributed to her winning a commission from the government of Venezuela to execute the equestrian Simon Bolivar (1921).

In the following decade Farnham produced a multitude of public monuments and memorials, as well as critically acclaimed portraits of influential individuals including the President of the United States Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt and Marshal Ferdinand Foch (commander of the Allied Powers in WWI).

Farnham also sculpted busts of notable figures, including violinist Jascha Heifetz and silent film star Mary Pickford, and continued to create sculpture into her seventies.

The sculpture of four cowboys on horseback, flailing their lassos and kicking up dirt was made in honor of her mentor Frederic Remington, who was a known sculptor of western themes.