• About the Work of Art

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Frederic Remington became one of the foremost illustrators of the American West, but the circumstances of his early life made such a fate unlikely. He was born into a wealthy family in Canton, New York, on October 4, 1861. The proud son of a newspaper publisher and Civil War hero, young Remington was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and also serve in the military. He was good in sports and well liked by fellow students, but military regimentation did not interest him. It was during high school that Remington’s desire to pursue art began in earnest. In 1878 Remington attended Yale College School of Art, but upon his father’s death in 1880, his college education abruptly ended. Remington made his first trip westward in 1881, vacationing in Montana Territory.

Determined to establish himself financially, Remington moved to Kansas and became involved in a series of short-lived business ventures while continuing his artistic pursuits. Returning to New York City in 1885, he worked as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, then the largest pictorial newspaper in the world. He was enthusiastic, for he knew that his calling was that of an artist, and the West would be his specialty.

Remington’s captivating realism was the result of firsthand observation. In the late 1880s and 1890s, he traveled frequently as an artist-correspondent, making sketches to develop later into oil paintings and accumulating photographs and props for his studio. His travels enabled him to amass a store of accurate details that he would then draw on for inspiration in the comfort of his studio.

In 1895 Remington began to make sculptures, producing twenty-two different subjects. He worked in clay, which was then cast in bronze at foundries. In 1898 he began working exclusively with Roman Bronze Works in New York. His ambitious pieces were critically acclaimed and financially successful.

Though Harper’s Monthly made Remington a popular name, the magazine released him in 1899. Soon after, the forty-year-old painter signed a contract with Colliers: The National Weekly.

Early on, attention to details and accuracy was of great importance to Remington. As his career developed, however, he gradually minimized an emphasis on detail, enabling him to better communicate overall mood and atmosphere. This artist, who had been a master of action and a storyteller in line and paint, became a student of mood. Some works even projected a brooding intensity.

An exhibition of Remington’s artwork in 1909 was the most highly praised of his career. At last he had the critical acclaim he had sought for so long. Various reviewers praised his subjects, colors, and draftsmanship. Within months of this acclaim, at age forty-eight, Remington died of complications from appendicitis. In his lifetime, Remington produced some twenty-five bronzes, in addition to 3,000 paintings and drawings. The Amon Carter Museum is a major repository of his work. His images convey an expressive interpretation of the American West and have influenced generations of viewers. Remington was an artist whose subjects and styles satisfied public taste and portrayed a vanishing era.

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