Frederic Remington

American artist

• Born: October 4, 1861
• Birthplace: Canton, New York
• Died: December 26, 1909
• Place of death: Ridgefield, Connecticut

One of the best-remembered American artists of the nineteenth century, Remington created drawings and bronzes that recorded the Old West before it vanished, thus preserving it for later generations.

Early Life

Frederic Sackrider Remington was the only child of Clara Bascomb Sackrider and Seth Pierrepont Remington, a newspaper editor and publisher. His early childhood was marked by the four-year absence of his father, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Civil War. Upon his father’s return, Remington eagerly listened to his tales of the cavalry and the West; perhaps Remington’s lifelong fascination with the horse can be traced to this period. At any rate, Remington grew up sketching horses, cowboys, Indians, and soldiers. His artistic ability pleased his father, whom he idolized, but did not satisfy his practical mother, who envisioned for him a career in business. School never received much of his attention; instead, his childhood revolved around fishing, swimming, and other outdoor activities.

In 1878, after two years at a military academy in Massachusetts, Remington entered Yale and its newly established School of Art and Architecture. In the college weekly, Courant, he published his first drawing, College Riff-Raff (1879), a cartoon of a bruised football player. Despite his interest in art, he was soon bored by the study of classical painting and sculpture, but he discovered a new diversion, football. Tall, robust, and burly, he was a natural football player and became a forward on the varsity team.

In 1880, Remington’s father died, leaving him a modest inheritance. Finding himself financially independent, at least momentarily, he left Yale against his mother’s wishes, after having completed less than two years. In Canton, he tried several jobs, but none was to his liking. In the summer of 1880, upon meeting Eva Adele Caten of Gloversville, New York, he fell deeply in love and asked her father for her hand, but he was refused on the grounds that his future was not promising. Remington, dejected, left to find his fortune in the West. Working as a cowboy and a scout did not make him rich, but as a result of the trip he sold a sketch, Cow-boys of Arizona: Roused by a Scout (1882), to Harper’s Weekly, his first appearance in a major magazine, a milestone even if the sketch was redrawn by a staff artist.

In 1883, Remington bought a sheep ranch in Kansas. However, the difficult and lonely work induced him to sell it in 1884. With the last of his inheritance, he invested in a saloon. Although the business was successful, his unscrupulous partners tricked him out of his share. After selling a few drawings to a Kansas City art dealer, he began seriously to consider an art career. In retrospect, he said of his interest in drawing, “I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever.… Without knowing exactly how to do it, I began to record some facts around me and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded.” Thus, he began the task of chronicling the West before it disappeared.

Returning to New York, Remington again approached Eva’s father, who relented, perhaps because Eva would have no other. After being married on October 1, 1884, he and his bride set out for Kansas City to establish their home. A steady income was not to be found, however, so after less than a year Eva returned to New York, and Remington resumed his travels through the West. At one time, he prospected for gold; at another, he rode with an army unit in search of Apaches, but always he sketched.

Realizing that New York City, with its many publishers, was the place for an aspiring illustrator, he returned in 1885 and, with Eva, set up a household in Brooklyn. The early days were difficult as he doggedly tried to sell his drawings, but the turning point came in 1886, when Harper’s Weekly published on its cover his drawing The Apache War: Indian Scouts on Geronimo’s Trail (1886). Soon Remington’s work began to appear regularly in major magazines.

Life’s Work

In the years following 1886, Remington became recognized as the foremost illustrator of his day. Over his lifetime, his drawings, numbering more than twenty-seven hundred, were published in forty-one different periodicals. His illustrations, with their Western themes, struck a responsive chord in the American public, whose curiosity had been aroused by the tales of gold and Indians, circulating out of the Wild West.

After 1886, Remington went West every summer to sketch and to collect Indian artifacts and cowboy paraphernalia. At other times, he traveled on assignment for magazines. In 1888, he covered the army campaign against the Apache. In 1890, he was in the Badlands of South Dakota, documenting the Plains Indian Wars. Traveling with the army, he experienced at first hand several brief skirmishes with the Lakota. The Wounded Knee Massacre, the last battle of the Indian Wars, took place a few miles from where he was situated.

When the Spanish-American War erupted, Remington, representing Harper’s Weekly and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, went to Cuba. Arriving with the cavalry, he witnessed the assault of San Juan Hill. One of his paintings, Charge of the Rough Riders of San Juan Hill (1899), depicted Theodore Roosevelt, his friend of ten years, leading his men. Roosevelt’s charge probably occurred more in Remington’s imagination than in fact. Roosevelt, however, used the drawing to his advantage in creating his image as a soldier and hero that would later prove useful to his political future.

Remington illustrated not only articles but also books, the first being Mexico Today (1886) by Solomon Buckley Griffin. In 1890, nearly thirty, he illustrated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1855), the popularity of which can be attributed partly to Remington’s drawings. He illustrated books by Owen Wister, the noted writer of Western tales, and, in 1892, he did the drawings for Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1892). In all, he illustrated more than 140 books.

Remington also wrote about the West he loved. His first signed articles, published in 1888, concerned the Lakota uprising. In 1895, he published the first of his eight books, Pony Tracks , a collection of his articles concerning army life. In 1902, he wrote a novel, John Ermine of the Yellowstone , a romantic Western, which, in 1903, he adapted for the stage. The drawings for the novel posed a problem: How was he to illustrate a love story when he rarely sketched women? He solved his dilemma when he hired the well-known illustrator Charles Dana Gibson to draw the female figures.

In addition to being known as a pen-and-ink illustrator, Remington was also a popular oil painter. Beginning in 1887, his work was accepted in major exhibitions, often receiving prizes. He was an associate member of the prestigious National Academy of Design and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Remington’s favorite subject for his paintings as well as for his illustrations was the Old West, a world full of cowboys, Indians, and horses. His paintings typically emphasize action; the scene might be of riders and horses wildly racing for safety, as in A Dash for Timber (1889), or of men besieged, as in The Fight for the Water Hole (probably painted 1895-1902). His paintings tell the story of the taming of the West. The fur traders, scouts, and soldiers populating his canvases conquer the West through their determination and strength while the Indians, noble but also cruel, are shown in their losing struggle.

In 1895, after watching the sculptor Frederic W. Ruckstull at work, Remington tried the new medium; the result was The Bronco Buster , a casting of which was later presented to Theodore Roosevelt by the Rough Riders on their return from the Spanish-American War. Over the next fourteen years, he produced twenty-five sculptures, all except one focusing on a Western theme. His bronzes have the same focus on action and the same attentiveness to details that distinguish his drawings.

Remington was a disciplined artist: He would rise at six and draw until the early afternoon; later in the evening, he would return to his studio to plan his work for the next day. He was also a highly successful artist. First known as an illustrator, he also made his mark as a writer, painter, and sculptor. On December 26, 1909, at the age of forty-eight, he died of complications from an appendectomy. His art can be found at the Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York, and at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, in Fort Worth, Texas. The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of History and Art houses a large collection of Remington bronzes.

Significance

Through his illustrations, paintings, and bronzes, Remington created the image of the West held by most Americans. The lonely cowboy, the savage Indian, the limitless land, the noble horse, the brave soldiers who battle against overwhelming odds, and the pioneers who never question their right to settle the land are all in his paintings.

Remington’s illustrations and drawings have been valued as a documentary of the West. His rendering of the costumes of the Indian tribes, the different breeds of the horses, and the details of the soldiers’ dress have been praised for their authenticity. Some critics argue that Remington also romanticized the West, indicating the many buffalo skulls that litter his paintings, and others suggest that his work owes as much to his imagination as to fact, citing the historically inaccurate costumes of the Indians in The Song of Hiawatha. Both evaluations are correct.

Remington was highly accurate in his early drawings, which were usually based on sketches done in the West, but the later paintings were often imagined reconstructions of fact and fantasy, portraying the spirit of the West rather than a particular moment. However, whatever faults might be found in his paintings, they do not obscure the fact that Remington had a tremendous impact on how Americans view the West. Many would agree with Owen Wister, “Remington is not merely an artist; he is a national treasure.”

Bibliography

Anderson, Nancy K., et al. Frederic Remington: The Color of Night. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. In the final decade of his life Remington created seventy-two paintings depicting the color of night. This book accompanied an exhibit of these nocturnes and features three essays placing the works within a literary, aesthetic, and technological context. Includes reproductions of the paintings.

Baigell, Matthew. The Western Art of Frederic Remington. New York: Random House, 1976. Contains a short introduction to Remington’s life and work followed by color plates of Remington’s paintings from 1887 to 1909. Baigell is critical of Remington’s portrayal of the West, suggesting that it is a romanticized version.

Dippie, Brian W. The Frederic Remington Art Museum Collection. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. A catalog of Remington’s work held by the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. Features a detailed analysis of the holdings, with excerpts from Remington’s letters, diaries, and sketchbooks. There are 333 illustrations.

Ewers, John C. Artists of the Old West. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Contains chapters devoted to the artists who popularized the West, including George Catlin, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell. Discusses Remington’s experiences during the Plains Indian War.

Jackson, Marta, ed. The Illustrations of Frederic Remington. New York: Crown, 1970. A brief account of Remington’s life, followed by drawings that are arranged by subject. Many of the drawings are not found in other books. Includes a brief commentary by Owen Wister on Remington’s artistic contribution.

McCracken, Harold. Frederic Remington: Artist of the Old West. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947. A widely recognized biography. Contains colorful anecdotes gathered from Remington’s friends and relatives. A glowing appraisal of Remington’s artistic contribution. McCracken supplies a useful list of all of Remington’s drawings, books, and bronzes. Includes forty-eight plates of paintings, pastels, and bronzes.

Nemerov, Alexander. Frederic Remington and Turn-of-the-Century America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995. Nemerov argues that Remington was not merely an illustrator of Western frontier scenes, but also the creator of complex, imaginative art.

Richardson, E. P. Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956. An authoritative study of American painting. Praises Remington as an illustrator who realistically recorded the West but criticizes the “crude and raw” color of his paintings.

Samuels, Peggy, and Harold Samuels. Frederic Remington. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982. This massive but readable biography is the most thorough, most balanced study of Remington to date. Although the authors hold their subject in high regard, they do not fail to acknowledge his flaws. Their account emphasizes the influence of Impressionism on his later work.

Vorpahl, Ben Merchant. Frederic Remington and the West: With the Eye of the Mind. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Traces how Remington was influenced by the West and how he, in turn, shaped the public’s image of the frontier. An academic study, ranging widely in literature and social history.

Wear, Bruce. The Bronze World of Frederic Remington. Tulsa, Okla.: Gaylord, 1966. Discusses the bronzes, how they were cast, Remington’s involvement with the production, and the problem of forgeries. The text is followed by plates of the bronzes and pertinent information about each work.