Timeline

Remington writes Wister “you ought to see the great model I am making,” and he writes Poultney Bigelow that he was “making a bronze which is to be one of the world’s treasures.”

Remington’s first book, Pony Tracks, a collection of earlier articles, is published; Remington dedicates the book to “the fellows that rode the ponies that made the tracks.”

Owen Wister’s article, “The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher,” accompanied by five illustrations by Remington (including The Fall of the Cowboy, ACM) is published in Harper’s New Monthly; Remington gives Wister The Last Cavalier, one of the paintings made for the article; the masterpiece accompanying the article, however, is the painting titled The Fall of the Cowboy.

The art critic Arthur Hoeber writes a glowing review of Remington’s The Bronco Buster in Harper’s Weekly; the writer William Dean Howells tells the artist that “you are such a wonder in every way that it would be no wonder if sculpture turned out to be one of your best holds.” The Century Magazine publishes an article on the bronze illustrated with photographs, and the work is praised by the New York Times.

Theodore Roosevelt writes Remington, “It seems to me that you in your line, and Wister in his, are doing the best work in America to-day.”

Remington and an assistant posing a model in his studio in New Rochelle, New York.

Studio portrait of Remington’s friend, the writer Owen Wister.

Remington on horseback in Central Park, New York.

Remington travels to Texas and Mexico to hunt and sketch, returning to New York in February with material for six articles

Remington spends the summer in the North Country doing pastel studies; he tells a friend, “I have cornered the New York market in pastel boards and am going up to St. Lawrence Co. for the summer and I am going to paint every thing in it.” He finds the pastel medium easier for the color studies he is beginning to do under the increasing influence of the Impressionists.

Remington travels west as a guest of Lieutenant Carter Johnson, writing that he is going to Montana “to sweat & stink and thirst and starve and paint—particularly paint.” He talks with Johnson about his exploits with the Northern Cheyenne seventeen years earlier, and makes the following note in his sketchbook: “The attack on the camp—Johnson charging the infantry up the hill;” this becomes the inspiration for his oil, Through the Smoke Sprang the Daring Soldier (ACM), painted the following year.

Remington and three unidentified men at a campfire.

The Werner Company, a Chicago Publisher, reissues Remington’s illustrations from the autobiography of General Nelson A. Miles as a portfolio of plates titled Remington’s Frontier Sketches.

Remington receives a letter from Lieutenant Carter Johnson at Fort Assiniboine, Montana, praising him for the depiction of his exploits during the Cheyenne uprising as detailed in Remington’s story, “The Sergeant of the Orphan Troop,” to be published in Harper’s New Monthly in August; one of the illustrations for the article is the painting Through the Smoke Sprang the Daring Soldier (ACM), and Johnson calls it “very true to life.

Remington’s article, “The Great Medicine-Horse: An Indian Myth of the Thunder,” is published in Harper’s New Monthly.

Remington’s article “Joshua Goodenough’s Old Letter” is published in Harper’s New Monthly.

Remington has a comprehensive exhibition of his work in Boston; one newspaper critic disapproves of his work, saying that “Remington’s indifference to the beauty of form, his unfeeling realism, and his poverty of color are formidable handicaps.”

Theodore Roosevelt writes Remington: “Are you aware, O sea-going plainsman, that aside from what you do with the pencil, you come closer to the real thing with the pen than any other man in the western business? And I include [Emerson] Hough, [George Bird] Grinnell, and [Owen] Wister. Your articles have been a growing surprise. I don’t know how you do it, any more than I know how [Rudyard] Kipling does it; but somehow you get close not only to the plainsman and soldier, but to the half-breed and Indian, in the same way Kipling does to the British Tommy and the Gloucester codfisher. Literally innumerable short stories and sketches of cowboys, Indians and soldiers have been, and will be, written. Even if very good they will die like mushrooms, unless they are the very best; but the very best will live and will make the Cantos in the last Epic of the Western Wilderness before it ceased being a wilderness. Now, I think you are writing this ‘very best.’”

Remington posing in hunting gear with two guides at Cranberry Lake in the North Country of Canada.

Remington travels to Key West, Florida, on April 14 as part of a contingent of correspondents to cover the developing war between the United States and Spain in Cuba; he is assigned to the battleship Iowa, part of the naval blockade fleet. He transfers to the flagship New York before being put ashore on May 2 to await further events; Remington is back in New Rochelle by the end of the month.

Remington writes Eva: “The first night ashore it rained and I slept all night wet… I have an awful cold—and can’t get over it… John Fox [a writer for Harper’s] and I sleep on the same blanket. We burn at Genl. Chaffee’s mess—crackers, coffee, and bacon—by God I haven’t had enough to eat since I left Tampa—I am dirty—oh so dirty. I have on a canvas suit and have 2 shirts… I have no baggage which I do not carry on my back… But I am seeing all the actualities of campaigning.”

Remington arrives back in New Rochelle to rest after his Cuban sojourn.

The First Volunteer Infantry, or “Rough Riders,” are mustered out of the service; the troops present a copy of Remington’s bronze Bronco Buster to their leader, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who writes Remington: “I have long looked hungrily at that bronze, but to have it come to me in this precise way seemed almost too good. There could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment.”

Remington copyrights his sculpture, The Wicked Pony, which he had begun modeling in 1896, and the bronze goes on sale at Tiffany’s for $250; only six copies are ultimately sold.