Frederic Remington | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861-10-04)October 4, 1861 Canton, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 26, 1909(1909-12-26) (aged 48) Ridgefield, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | Yale University,New Haven, Connecticut, one drawing class, 1878; Art Students League, New York, 1886 |
| Known for | Painting (watercolor and oil), sculpture, drawing (pen and ink,ink wash),mixed media, journalist and writer |
| Notable work | The Bronco Buster |
| Movement | Illustration,Impressionism,Nocturne, andTonalism |
| Spouse | Eva Caten (1884–1909) |
| Relatives | Eliphalet Remington (cousin) |
| Awards | 1891: Elected Associate of theNational Academy of Design (ANA) |
| Patrons | Theodore Roosevelt,Elizabeth Custer,Harper's Weekly,Harper's Monthly,Century Magazine,Scribner's,Cosmopolitan,Collier's, and many others |
Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre ofWestern American Art. His works are known for depicting theWestern United States in the last quarter of the 19th century and featuring such images ascowboys,Native Americans, and theUS Cavalry.[1]
Remington was born inCanton, New York, in 1861 to Seth Pierrepont Remington (1830–1880)[2] and Clarissa (Clara) Bascom Sackrider (1836–1912).[3][4]
His maternal family owned hardware stores and emigrated fromAlsace-Lorraine in the early 18th century.[5] His maternal family, ofFrench Basque ancestry, came to America in the early 1600s and foundedWindsor, Connecticut.[6][7] Remington's father was aUnion army colonel in theAmerican Civil War, whose family had arrived in America from England in 1637. He was a newspaper editor and postmaster, and the staunchlyRepublican family was active in local politics. The Remingtons were horsemen. One of Remington's great-grandfathers, Samuel Bascom, was a saddle maker by trade. Remington's ancestors also fought in theFrench and Indian War, theAmerican Revolution, and theWar of 1812.[8]
Remington was a cousin ofEliphalet Remington, founder of theRemington Arms Company, which is considered America's oldest gunmaker.[9] He was also related to three famousmountain men:Jedediah Smith, Jonathan T. Warner, and Robert "Doc" Newell.[citation needed] Through the Warner side of his family, Remington was related toGeorge Washington, the firstU.S. president.[citation needed]
Colonel Remington was away at war during most of the first four years of his son's life. After the war, he moved his family toBloomington, Illinois for a brief time and was appointed editor of the BloomingtonRepublican, but the family returned to Canton in 1867.[10] Remington was the only child of the marriage, and received constant attention and approval. He was an active child, large and strong for his age, who loved to hunt, swim, ride, and go camping. He was a poor student though, particularly in math, which did not bode well for his father's ambitions for his son to attendWest Point. He began to make drawings and sketches of soldiers and cowboys at an early age.
_(14579831590).jpg)
The family moved toOgdensburg, New York when Remington was eleven and he attended Vermont Episcopal Institute, a church-run military school, where his father hoped discipline would rein in his son's lack of focus and perhaps lead to a military career. Remington took his first drawing lessons at the Institute. He then transferred to another military school where his classmates found the young Remington to be a pleasant fellow, a bit careless and lazy, good-humored, and generous of spirit but definitely not soldier material.[11] He enjoyed making caricatures and silhouettes of his classmates. At 17, he wrote to his uncle[clarification needed] of his modest ambitions, "I never intend to do any great amount of labor. I have but one short life and do not aspire to wealth or fame in a degree which could only be obtained by an extraordinary effort on my part."[12] He imagined a career for himself as a journalist, with art as a sideline.
Remington attended the art school atYale University and studied underJohn Henry Niemeyer.[1] Remington was the only male student in his first year. He found that football and boxing were more interesting than the formal art training, particularly drawing from casts and still life objects. He preferred action drawing and his first published illustration was a cartoon of a "bandaged football player" for the student newspaper,Yale Courant.[13] Though he was not a star player, his participation on the strong Yale football team was a great source of pride for Remington and his family. He left Yale in 1879 to tend to his ailing father, who hadtuberculosis. His father died a year later, at 50, receiving respectful recognition from the citizens of Ogdensburg. Remington's Uncle Mart[clarification needed] secured a good-paying clerical job for his nephew inAlbany, New York, and Remington would return home on weekends to see his girlfriend Eva Caten. After the rejection of his engagement proposal to Eva by her father, Remington became a reporter for his uncle's newspaper and went on to other short-lived jobs.
Living off his inheritance and modest work income, Remington refused to go back to art school and instead spent time camping and enjoying himself. At 19, he made his first trip west, going toMontana,[14] at first to buy a cattle operation and then a mining interest, but realized that he did not have sufficient capital for either. In the American West of 1881, he saw the vast prairies, the quickly shrinkingbison herds, the still unfenced cattle, and the last major confrontations of US Cavalry and Native American tribes, scenes he had imagined since his childhood. He also huntedgrizzly bears with Montague Stevens inNew Mexico in 1895.[15] Though the trip was undertaken as a lark, it gave Remington a more authentic view of the West than some of the later artists and writers who followed in his footsteps, such asN. C. Wyeth andZane Grey, who arrived twenty-five years later when much of the mythic West had already slipped into history. From that first trip,Harper's Weekly printed Remington's first published commercial effort, a re-drawing of a quick sketch on wrapping paper that he had mailed back east.[16] In 1883, Remington went to rural Kansas,[17][18] south of the city ofPeabody near the tiny community ofPlum Grove,[19] to try his hand at the booming sheep ranching and wool trade, as one of the "holiday stockmen", rich young easterners out to make a quick killing as ranch owners. He invested his entire inheritance but found ranching to be a rough, boring, isolated occupation which deprived him of the finer things he was used to from East Coast life, and the real ranchers thought of him as lazy. In 1884, he sold his land.[20]
Remington continued sketching, but his results were still cartoonish and amateur. Less than a year after selling his ranch, he went home. After acquiring more capital from his mother, he returned to Kansas City to start a hardware business, but due to an alleged swindle, it failed, and he reinvested his remaining money as asilent, half-owner of a saloon. He went home to marry Eva Caten in 1884. (He had previously asked her father for her hand, but had been turned down—her father was a widower at the time and felt he needed Eva, but after he had remarried, was more amenable.)[21] The young couple returned to Kansas City immediately. Eva was unhappy with his saloon life and was unimpressed by the sketches of saloon inhabitants that Remington regularly showed her. When his real occupation became known, she left him and returned to Ogdensburg.[22] With his wife gone and with business doing badly, Remington started to sketch and paint in earnest, and bartered his sketches for essentials.
He soon had enough success selling his paintings to locals to see art as a real profession. Remington returned home again, his inheritance gone but his faith in his new career secured, reunited with his wife, and moved toBrooklyn. He began studies at theArt Students League of New York and significantly bolstered his fresh though still rough technique. His timing was excellent, as newspaper interest in the dying West was escalating. He submitted illustrations, sketches, and other works for publication with Western themes toCollier's andHarper's Weekly, as his recent Western experiences (highly exaggerated) and his hearty, breezy "cowboy" demeanor gained him credibility with the eastern publishers looking for authenticity.[23] His first full-page cover under his own name appeared inHarper's Weekly on January 9, 1886, when he was twenty-five. With financial backing from his Uncle Bill,[clarification needed] Remington was able to pursue his art career and support his wife.
Several of his relatives were also artists, including Indian portrait artistGeorge Catlin,[24] cowboy sculptorEarl W. Bascom,[24] and (also on the Bascom side)Frank Tenney Johnson, the "father of western moonlight painting".[citation needed]
In 1886, Remington was sent to Arizona byHarper's Weekly on a commission as an artist-correspondent to cover the government's war againstGeronimo. Although he never caught up with Geronimo, Remington did acquire many authentic artifacts to be used later as props, and made many photos and sketches valuable for later paintings. He also made notes on the true colors of the West, such as "shadows of horses should be a cool carmine & Blue", to supplement the black-and-white photos. Ironically, art critics later criticized his palette as "primitive and unnatural" even though it was based on actual observation.[25]
After returning East, Remington was sent byHarper's Weekly to cover the1886 Charleston earthquake. To expand his commission work, he also began doing drawings forOuting magazine. His first year as a commercial artist had been successful, earning Remington $1,200, almost triple that of a typical teacher.[26] He had found his life's work and bragged to a friend, "That's a pretty good break for an ex cow-puncher to come to New York with $30 and catch on it 'art'."[27]
For commercial reproduction in black-and-white, he produced ink andwash drawings. As he added watercolor, he began to sell his work in art exhibitions. His works were selling well but garnered no prizes, as the competition was strong and masters likeWinslow Homer andEastman Johnson were considered his superiors. A trip to Canada in 1887 produced illustrations of theBlackfoot, theCrow Nation, and theCanadian Mounties, which were eagerly enjoyed by the reading public.
Later that year, Remington received a commission to do eighty-three illustrations for a book byTheodore Roosevelt,Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail to be serialized inThe Century Magazine before publication.[28] The 29-year-old Roosevelt had a similar Western adventure to Remington, losing money on a ranch in North Dakota the previous year but gaining experience which made him an "expert" on the West. The assignment gave Remington's career a big boost and forged a lifelong connection with Roosevelt.
His full-color oil paintingReturn of the Blackfoot War Party was exhibited at theNational Academy of Design and theNew York Herald commented that Remington would "one day be listed among our great American painters".[29] Though not admired by all critics, Remington's work was deemed "distinctive" and "modern". By now, he was demonstrating the ability to handle complex compositions with ease, as inMule Train Crossing the Sierras (1888), and to show action from all points of view.[28] His status as the new trendsetter in Western art was solidified in 1889 when he won a second-class medal at the Paris Exposition. He had been selected by the American committee to represent American painting, overAlbert Bierstadt whose majestic, large-scale landscapes peopled with tiny figures of pioneers and Indians were by then considered passé.
Around this time, Remington made a gentleman's agreement withHarper's Weekly, giving the magazine an informal first option on his output but maintaining Remington's independence to sell elsewhere if desired. As a bonus, the magazine launched a massive promotional campaign for Remington, stating that "He draws what he knows, and he knows what he draws." Though laced with blatant puffery (common for the time) claiming that Remington was a bona fide cowboy and Indian scout, the effect of the campaign was to raise Remington to the equal of the era's top illustrators,Howard Pyle andCharles Dana Gibson.[30]
His first one-man show, in 1890, presented twenty-one paintings at the American Art Galleries and was very well received. With success all but assured, Remington became established in society. His personality, his "pseudo-cowboy" speaking manner, and his "Wild West" reputation were strong social attractions. His biography falsely promoted some of the myths he encouraged about his Western experiences.[31]
Remington's regular attendance at celebrity banquets and stag dinners, however, though helpful to his career, fostered prodigious eating and drinking which caused his girth to expand alarmingly. Obesity became a constant problem for him from then on. Among his urban friends and fellow artists, he was "a man among men, a deuce of a good fellow" but notable because he (facetiously) "never drew but two women in his life, and they were failures" (this estimation failed to account for his female Native American subjects).[32]
In 1890, Remington and his wife moved toNew Rochelle, New York, to have both more living space and extensive studio facilities, and also with the hope of gaining more exercise. The community was close to New York City affording easy access to the publishing houses and galleries necessary for the artist, and also rural enough to provide him with the space he needed for horseback riding, and other physical activities that relieved the long hours of concentration required by his work. Moreover, an artists' colony had developed in the town, so that the Remingtons counted among their neighbors writers, actors, and artists such as Francis Wilson,Julian Hawthorne,Edward Kemble, andAugustus Thomas.
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The Remingtons' substantial Gothic revival house was situated at 301 Webster Avenue, on a prestigious promontory known asLathers Hill. A sweeping lawn rolled south towardLong Island Sound, providing views on three sides of the beautifulWestchester County countryside. Remington called itEndion, an Ojibwa word meaning "the place where I live".[33] In the early years, no real studio existed at Endion and Remington did most of his work in a large attic under the home's frontgable where he stored materials collected on his many western excursions. Later he used his library on the main floor, a larger, more comfortable room that soon took on the cluttered appearance of an atelier. However, neither situation was completely satisfactory: the space was limited, the light was less than adequate, and the surroundings were generally uninspiring. In the spring of 1896 Remington retained the New Rochelle architect O. William Degen to plan a studio addition to the house. An article in theNew Rochelle Pioneer of April 26 touted the "fine architectural design" of the studio. Remington himself wrote to his friend the novelist Owen Wister:[34]
Have concluded to build a butler's pantry and a studio (Czar size) on my house—we will be torn [up] for a month and then will ask you to come over—throw your eye on the march of improvement and say this is a great thing for American art. The fireplace is going to be like this.—Old Norman house—Big—big.
Remington's fame made him a favorite of the Western Army officers fighting the last Native American battles. He was invited out West to make their portraits in the field and to gain them national publicity through Remington's articles and illustrations forHarper's Weekly, particularly GeneralNelson Miles, an Indian fighter who aspired to the presidency of the United States.[31] In turn, Remington got exclusive access to the soldiers and their stories and boosted his reputation with the reading public as "The Soldier Artist". One of his 1889 paintings,A Dash for the Timber, depicts eight cavalrymen shooting atApaches in the rear as they attempt to outrun the Indians. Another painting that year,Cavalry in an Arizona Sand-Storm, depicts cavalrymen in asandstorm. Remington wrote that the "heat was awful and the dust rose in clouds. Men get sulky and go into a comatose state – the fine alkali dust penetrates everything but the canteens."[35]
Remington arrived on the scene just after the 1890massacre at Wounded Knee on thePine Ridge Indian Reservation inSouth Dakota, in which 150Sioux, mostly women and children, were killed. He reported the event as "The Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota", having hailed the Army's "heroic" actions toward the Indians.[36] Some of the Miles paintings aremonochromatic and have an almost "you-are-there" photographic quality, heightening the realism, as inThe Parley (1898).[37]
Remington'sSelf-Portrait on a Horse (1890) shows the artist as he had wished, not a stout Easterner weighing heavily on a horse, but a tough, lean cowboy heading for adventure with his trusty steed. It was the image his publishers worked hard to maintain as well. HistorianDavid McCullough described Remington of that period as "a man of phenomenal appetite for good food and drink" and "a huge specimen of humanity", weighing perhaps 250 pounds (110 kg) for his 5 ft 9 in (175 cm) frame.[38]
InHis Last Stand (1890), a cornered bear in the middle of a prairie is brought down by dogs and riflemen, which may have been a symbolized treatment of the dying Indians he had witnessed. Remington's attitude toward Native Americans was typical for the time. He thought them unfathomable, fearless, superstitious, ignorant and pitiless, and generally portrayed them as such.[citation needed] White men under attack were brave and noble.
Through the 1890s, Remington took frequent trips around the US, Mexico, and abroad to gather ideas for articles and illustrations, but his military and cowboy subjects always sold the best, even as the Old West was playing out. In 1892, he paintedA Cavalryman's Breakfast on the Plains. In 1895 Remington headed south and his illustrations and article on the "Florida crackers" (cowboys) were published by Harper's magazine.[39] Gradually, he transitioned from the premiere chronicler-artist of the Old West to its most important historian-artist. He formed an effective partnership withOwen Wister, who became the leading writer of Western stories at the time. Having more confidence of his craft, Remington wrote, "My drawing is done entirely from memory. I never use a camera now. The interesting never occurs in nature as a whole, but in pieces. It's more what I leave out than what I add."[31] Remington's focus continued on outdoor action and he rarely depicted scenes in gambling and dance halls typically seen in Western movies. He avoided frontier women as well. His paintingA Misdeal (1897) is a rare instance of indoor cowboy violence.[40]
Remington had developed a sculptor's 360-degree sense of vision but until a chance remark by playwright Augustus Thomas in 1895, Remington had not yet conceived of himself as a sculptor and thought of it as a separate art for which he had no training or aptitude.[41] With help from friend and sculptorFrederick Ruckstull, Remington constructed his first armature and clay model, a "broncho buster" on a horse that wasrearing on its hind legs—technically a very challenging subject. After several months, the novice sculptor overcame the difficulties and had a plaster cast made, then bronze copies, which were sold at Tiffany's. Remington was ecstatic about his new line of work, and though critical response was mixed, some labelling it negatively as "illustrated sculpture", it was a successful first effort earning him $6,000 over three years.[42]
During that busy year, Remington became further immersed in military matters, inventing a new type of ammunition carrier; but his patented invention was not accepted for use by the War Department.[43] His favorite subject for magazine illustration was now military scenes, though he admitted, "Cowboys are cash with me".[44] Sensing the political mood of that time, he was looking forward to a military conflict which would provide the opportunity to be a heroic war correspondent, giving him both new subject matter and the excitement of battle. He was growing bored with routine illustration, and he wrote toHoward Pyle, the dean of American illustrators, that he had "done nothing but potboil of late".[45] (Earlier, he and Pyle, in a gesture of mutual respect, had exchanged paintings: Pyle's painting of a dead pirate for Remington's of a rough and ready cowpuncher). He was still working very hard and spending seven days a week in his studio.[44]
Remington was further irritated by the lack of his acceptance to regular membership by the Academy, likely because of his image as a popular, cocky, and ostentatious artist.[44] Remington kept up his contact with celebrities and politicos, and continued to wooTheodore Roosevelt, now the New York City Police Commissioner, by sending him complimentary editions of new works. Despite Roosevelt's great admiration for Remington, he never purchased a Remington painting or drawing.[46]
%2c_model_1902%2c_cast_1903%2c_NGA_166488.jpg)
Remington's association with Roosevelt paid off, however, when the artist was hired as a war correspondent and illustrator forWilliam Randolph Hearst'sNew York Journal in January 1897. Remington was sent down to Cuba in company with celebrity journalistRichard Harding Davis, another friend and supporter of Roosevelt. Cuba's apparent peacefulness left them nothing to report on. That led to this famous but probably apocryphal exchange of telegrams between Remington and Hearst:
Remington did return to New Rochelle while Davis remained until February, when he booked return passage on theP&O steamerOlivette. Aboard the ship, he met Clemencia Arango, who said her brother was a colonel in the insurgence, that she had been deported for her revolutionary activities, and that she had been stripsearched by the Spanish officials before boarding. Shocked by her story, Davis dispatched this news from Tampa to Hearst on the 10th. The front page of theJournal for the 12th was dominated by Remington's sensationalist illustration, run across five columns of newsprint, of Arango stripped naked on the ship's deck, in public, surrounded by three male Spanish officials. Hearst deemed it the "Olivette Incident". The issue sold a record number of copies, almost a million, partly on the strength of Remington's image of a naked humiliated female resistance fighter.[48] The next day Arango called Remington's version largely a fabrication, saying that only a single female police matron had inspected her, and in a private setting.[49]
Two days later, on the 15th, theUSSMaine exploded. As theSpanish–American War took shape into April, the artist returned to Cuba to see military action for the first time. It was the "most wrenching, disillusioning experience of Remington's life."[48] As he witnessed theassault on San Juan Hill by American forces, including those led by Roosevelt, his heroic conception of war was shattered by the actual horror of jungle fighting and the deprivations he faced in camp. His reports and illustrations upon his return focused not on heroic generals but also on the troops, as in hisScream of the Shrapnel (1899), which depicts a deadly ambush on American troops by an unseen enemy.[50]
When the Rough Riders returned to the US, they presented their courageous leader Roosevelt with Remington's bronze statuette,The Bronco Buster, which the artist proclaimed, "the greatest compliment I ever had.... After this everything will be mere fuss." Roosevelt responded, "There could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment."[51]
In 1898, he achieved the public honor of having two paintings used for reproduction on US Postal stamps.[44] In 1900, Remington purchased an island on the U.S. side of the St. Lawrence River that he called Ingleneuk, which he used as a summer residence.[52][53]
In 1900, as an economy move, Harper's dropped Remington as their star artist. To compensate for the loss of work, Remington wrote and illustrated a full-length novel,The Way of an Indian, which was intended for serialization by a Hearst publication but was not published until five years later inCosmopolitan. Remington's protagonist, a Cheyenne named Fire Eater, is a prototype Native American as viewed by Remington and many of his time.[54]
Remington then returned to sculpture and produced his first works produced by thelost wax method, a higher-quality process than the earlier sand casting method, which he had employed.[55] By 1901,Collier's was buying Remington's illustrations on a steady basis. As his style matured, Remington portrayed his subjects in every light of day. His nocturnal paintings, very popular in his late life, such asA Taint on the Wind,Scare in the Pack Train andFired On, are more impressionistic and loosely painted and focus on an unseen threat.
Remington completed another novel in 1902,John Ermine of the Yellowstone, a modest success but a definite disappointment as it was completely overshadowed by the bestsellerThe Virginian, written by his sometime collaborator Owen Wister, which became a classic Western novel. A stage play based onJohn Ermine failed in 1904. AfterJohn Ermine, Remington decided he would soon quit writing and illustrating (he had drawn over 2700 illustrations) to focus on sculpture and painting.[56]
In 1903, Remington paintedHis First Lesson, set on an American-owned ranch inChihuahua, Mexico. The hands wear heavy chaps, starched white shirts, and slouch-brimmed hats.[35] In his paintings, Remington sought to let his audience "take away something to think about – to imagine."[35] In 1905, Remington had a major publicity coup whenCollier's devoted an entire issue to the artist, showcasing his latest works. It was that same year that the president of the Fairmount Park Art Association (now theAssociation for Public Art) commissioned Remington to create a large sculpture of a cowboy for Philadelphia'sFairmount Park, which was erected in 1908 on a jutting rock along Kelly Drive, a site that Remington had specifically chosen for the piece after he had a horseman pose for him in the exact location. Philadelphia'sCowboy (1908) was Remington's first and only large-scale bronze, and the sculpture is one of the earliest examples of site-specific art in the United States.[57]
Remington'sExplorers series, depicting older historical events in Western US history, did not fare well with the public or the critics.[58] The financial panic of 1907 caused a slow down in his sales and in 1908, fantasy artists, such asMaxfield Parrish, became popular with the public and with commercial sponsors.[59] Remington tried to sell his home in New Rochelle to get further away from urbanization. One night, he made a bonfire in his yard and burned dozens of his oil paintings that had been used for magazine illustration (worth millions of dollars today) to make an emphatic statement that he was done with illustration forever. He wrote that "there is nothing left but my landscape studies."[60]
Near the end of his life, he moved toRidgefield, Connecticut. In his final two years, under the influence ofThe Ten, he was veering more heavily toImpressionism, and he regretted that he was studio bound (by virtue of his declining health) and could not follow his peers, who painted "plein air".[61]
Remington died after an emergencyappendectomy led toperitonitis on December 26, 1909. His extreme obesity (of nearly 300 lbs = 136,1 kgs) had complicated the anesthesia and the surgery, and chronicappendicitis was cited in the postmortem examination as an underlying factor in his death.[62]
After Remington's death, his wife, Eva, moved to a home in Ogdensburg, NY (her hometown), which was made possible through the generosity of George Hall, an Ogdensburg industrialist, and John Howard, a friend of the Remingtons. Eva lived there with her sister, Emma, from 1915 to her death in 1918. While there, Eva managed Remington's copyrights and production of sculptures.[21] She also worked to establish a permanent memorial to her husband, which became a reality after her death when the Remington Art Memorial was established in her Ogdensburg home in 1923—today, the Frederic Remington Art Museum.[63]
TheFrederic Remington House was declared aNational Historic Landmark in 1965. He was the great-uncle of the artistDeborah Remington.[64] In 2009, theUnited States Congress enacted legislation renaming the historic Post Office inOgdensburg, New York, theFrederic Remington Post Office Building.[65]
Remington was the most successful Western illustrator in the "Golden Age" of illustration at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, so much so that the other Western artists such asCharles Russell andCharles Schreyvogel were known during Remington's life as members of the "School of Remington".[66] His style was naturalistic, sometimes impressionistic, and usually veered away from the ethnographic realism of earlier Western artists such asGeorge Catlin. His focus was firmly on the people and animals of the West, portraying men almost exclusively,[48] and the landscape was usually of secondary importance, unlike the members and descendants of the contemporaryHudson River School, such asFrederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, andThomas Moran, who glorified the vastness of the West and the dominance of nature over man. He took artistic liberties in his depictions of human action, also for the sake of his readers' and publishers' interest. Though always confident in his subject matter, Remington was less sure about his colors, and critics often harped on his palette, but his lack of confidence drove him to experiment and produce a great variety of effects, some very true to nature and some imagined.
His collaboration withOwen Wister onThe Evolution of the Cowpuncher, published byHarper's Monthly in September 1893, was the first statement of the mythical cowboy in American literature, spawning the entire genre of Western fiction, films, and theater that followed.[67] Remington provided the concept of the project, its factual content, and its illustrations and Wister supplied the stories, sometimes altering Remington's ideas.[68] (Remington's prototype cowboys were Mexican rancheros but Wister made the American cowboys descendants of Saxons. In truth, they were both partially right, as the first American cowboys were both the ranchers who tended the cattle and horses of the American Revolutionary Army on Long Island and the Mexicans who ranched in the Arizona and California territories.)[69]
Remington was one of the first American artists to illustrate the true gait of the horse in motion (along withThomas Eakins), as validated by the famous sequential photographs ofEadweard Muybridge.[70] Previously, horses in full gallop were usually depicted with all four legs pointing out, like "hobby horses". The galloping horse became Remington's signature subject, which was copied and interpreted by many Western artists who followed him to adopt the correct anatomical motion. Though criticized by some for his use of photography, Remington often created depictions that slightly exaggerated natural motion to satisfy the eye. He wrote that "the artist must know more than the camera... (the horse must be) incorrectly drawn from the photographic standpoint (to achieve the desired effect)."[71]
Also, noteworthy was Remington's invention of "cowboy" sculpture. From his inaugural piece,The Broncho Buster (1895), he created an art form which is still very popular among collectors of Western art. He has been called the "Father of Cowboy Sculpture".[72]
An early advocate of the photoengraving process over wood engraving for magazine reproduction of illustrative art, Remington became an accepted expert in reproduction methods, which helped gain him strong working relationships with editors and printers.[73] Furthermore, Remington's skill as a businessman was equal to his artistry, unlike many other artists who relied on their spouses or business agents or no one at all to run their financial affairs. He was an effective publicist and promoter of his art. He insisted for his originals to be handled carefully and returned to him in pristine condition (without editor's marks) so that he could sell them. He carefully regulated his output to maximize his income and kept detailed notes about his works and his sales. In 1991, thePBS seriesAmerican Masters filmed a documentary of Remington's life,Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days, which was produced and directed byTom Neff.
Remington was portrayed byNick Chinlund in theTNT miniseriesRough Riders (1997), which depicts the Spanish–American War and shows Remington's time as a war correspondent and his partnership withWilliam Randolph Hearst (portrayed byGeorge Hamilton).
_-_1982.802_-_Art_Institute_of_Chicago.jpg)
.jpg)
American museums with significant collections of his paintings, illustrations, and sculptures include:
