The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-02-13

Royal Cortissoz in February Scribner's.
l"HE Indian appealed to Frederic
/ Remington not in any histrionic
i way, not as a figure stepped out
from the pages of "Hiwatha," but as
just human creature, sometimes re-
splendent in the character of a militant
chief, sometimes unkempt, ill-smelling
and loathsomely drunk, and always the
member of strongly individualized race,
having much to do with guns and horses.
It would be stupid to be ungrateful for
the Indian pictures which have happened
to be idealized and have made the red
man seem an exotic If not a legendary
parsonage. Occasionally they have been
very good pictures, as witness several of
those painted by George de Forest Brush.
But the tendency, the right tendency, has
latterly been all in the direction which
Mr. Remington from the start has fol-
lowed
He was an illustrator when he began,
| '.black and white" man, and, as it has
turned out, he could not have had a bet
| ter preparation for his work as painter.
For one thing it fixed his mind on the
fact, and trained him In the swift nota-
ton of the movement which lies some
how at the very heart of wild western
life. Just as the cowboy, in the midst
| of a hurly-burly of cattle, shouting to
| his comrade words calling for instant ac-
ton, has no time to employ the diction
of Henry James or Gibbon, so the modest
Illustrator must use rapid pencil and
leave picture making to take care OF
Itself He must get the truth. Other
artistic elements must come later. can
not think of, Mr.. Remington as strolling
out upon the prairie with stool and UNI
brella and all the rest of an artists
ma ra phernalia, nor can I see him in my
minds eye politely requesting Three
Fingered Pete or gMan-Afraid-of-
His-Horses to fall into a ineffective pose
| and '1ook pleasant" I see him instead
on the back of mustang. or busying
himself around the campfire, or swapping
warns with the soldiers at a frontier post,
or 'nosing round amongst the tribes.
| 1t does not much matter, in sense,
whether or not he put immortal things
| into HIS sketch books during those first
campaigns of his. For my own part,
| I do not believe that they have the
smallest chance of lasting, save as, so
many documents. The important thing
is not that he failed to draw beautifully,
which is precisely what he failed to
do, but that he got into way of draw
| ing skillfully and cleverly, so that he
put his subject accurately before you
and made you feel it's special tang. His
SUCCESS was due not only to manual dex
terity but to his whole-hearted response
20 the straightforward, manly charm of
the life which by instinct he knew how
TO share. ] make a great deal of this
/ outdoor mood OF his, this sympathy, be-
i cause It REACTS to this day upon the
purely artistic qualities of his work.
Let us glance for a moment at bit
of his writing, the opening sentences of a
brief western story:
1.-The car had been sidetracked at Fort
the portef shook me. and announced
that 1t was o'clock. An hour later l
stepped out on the rear platform and
observed, that the sun would rise short
lly. but that meanwhile the air was
chill. and that. the bald, square-topped
hills of the bad lands cut rather hard
against the gray of the morning. Pres
emily a trooper galloped up with three
led horses which he tied to a stake"
In choosing passage from one of his
half dozen books / have purposely
avoided anything in the nature of a
l'purpie patch.'E though. 70 be sure, that