Preserving the Old West
Ca. 1874
 Frederic
Remington
was born in Canton,
New York.
 Attended the Yale
School of Art, where
he studied drawing
and played football.


When he was twenty years
old, he traveled west for a
vacation and mailed a
rough sketch to Harper’s
Weekly magazine, kicking
off his career as an
illustrator.
He had tried his hand at
sheep ranching in Kansas,
but after a couple of years
returned to New York,
making trips west from his
home base in the East. Most
of his work was created in
his studio in New Rochelle,
New York.
Harper's Weekly, September 17, 1887
"Burning the Range"
ILLUSTRATION



Remington made his name as an
illustrator, mostly of western and
military subjects, for most of the widely
circulated magazines of the late 1880s
and 1890s. Among the magazines he
illustrated were Harper’s Weekly,
Harper’s Monthly, Century, Collier’s,
Outing, Boys’ Life, and Cosmopolitan. He
remains most closely associated with
depictions of the old West.
He created most of the art for
reproduction in books and magazines
using black and white media: pen and
ink, ink wash and gouache, and black
and white oil.
His magazine work also included selfassigned reporting missions, which
resulted in many articles both written
and illustrated by Frederic Remington.
Photo of a stagecoach entering
a western town, ca .1888
Remington took many photos on his trips
West in order to create accurate drawings
when he returned home to New York.
WRITING
Remington was unafraid of
writing, and specialized in
tales of high adventure in the
West. His magazine articles
were collected into books,
and he published works of
fiction as well, amounting to
eight books in all.
At work in his summer studio at Ingleneuk
Island, ca. 1901.
PAINTINGS

Painting The Indian Trapper in his New York Studio,
ca. 1889
Remington traveled west
many times to report for
magazines and to
accumulate photographs,
make sketches and buy
props for his studio. This
enabled him to create
accurate details and gain
inspiration each day in the
comfort of his studio.
BRONZES

In 1895 Remington began to make
sculptures, producing 22 different
subjects. He worked in clay. His clay
models were cast in bronze at art
foundries. His first four subjects
were cast using the sand casting
method at the Henry-Bonnard Co. In
1898 he began working exclusively
with Roman Bronze Works, N.Y.,
which employed the lost wax
casting method. For an accounting
of legitimate bronze casts and their
whereabouts, see Icons of the West:
Frederic Remington’s Sculpture by
Michael D. Greenbaum, published
in 1996 by the Frederic Remington
Art Museum.
Remington working on the clay model of The Buffalo
Horse in his New Rochelle, New York studio. 1907
Remington’s only monumental statue.
Beneath leaden skies of gunmetal gray,
two cowboys have halted their horses in
a bleak wintry landscape. One of them
has dismounted to remove the rails of a
fence gate so they can pass through. The
whole scene is infused with the slow
rhythms and somber tones of an elegy; a
lament for something that has gone
forever. Remington, like his friend
Theodore Roosevelt, also a great
popularizer of the West in this period,
viewed the cowboy as the last great
figure of America’s frontier history; hardy
and self reliant, but doomed to extinction
in the wake of civilization’s steady
progress. This mythic image was soon to
be immortalized in the pages of Owen
Wister’s The Virginian, published to wide
acclaim in 1902—arguably the first
western novel.
The Fall of the Cowboy, 1895
Oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1961.230
Remington felt compelled to record an American West that he
believed to be disappearing. He loved to portray
the action and energy of the West
He made 24
sculptures in his last
14 years as an artist.
Remington liked the
permanence of
bronze sculpture: “My
water colors will
fade—but I am to
endure in bronze,” he
said.
The Bronco Buster, 1895
bronze
26 in. x 19 in. x 14 in.
The following slides are photographs and paintings by
Frederick Remington, unless otherwise stated. Look and think
about what the images are telling you about the “Old West.”
By this time, barbed wire had closed down the long cattle
trails for nearly two decades. Photographed by F. M. Steele.
Though he continued to study the night sky and to experiment with
color, Remington remained unsatisfied with the results of his efforts. It
was not until June 1908 that he was able to write in his diary that he
had finally discovered “how to do the silver sheen of moonlight.”
Remington's nocturnes are
filled with color and light—
moonlight, firelight, and
candlelight. These complex
paintings testify to the
artist's interest in modern
technological innovations,
including flash
photography and the
advent of electricity, which
was rapidly transforming
the character of night.
What do you see?
Describe the colors, the action, the setting and the subjects.
There are two cowboys trying to gather a group of runaway cows
that were frightened by lightning. A single bolt of lightning can
be seen in the upper-right hand corner of the painting.
This is a monochromatic painting, using tints and shades of green. These colors create a rain-like
effect in the painting, adding to the viewer’s understanding of the harshness of the conditions.
Green is often an eerie color, and in this painting it represents the strange light during a
thunderstorm, as well as the expressive quality of the fear of the stampede.
There are some yellow-greens in the painting, but they are a small part of the overall painting.
They create the little moments of light during the storm.
Rosa Bonheur (French,
1822–1899)
Oil on canvas 96 1/4 x 199
1/2 in. (244.5 x 506.7 cm)
Signed and dated (lower
right): Rosa Bonheur 1853.5
Gift of Cornelius
Vanderbilt, 1887 (87.25)
Mount and Day Herd
Date c1905
Horses, cowboys, and cattle,
surrounding water hole.
Library of Congress
Photo by F.M. Steele.