page_title: Frederic Remington
section_title: Later career
hierarchical_section_title: Frederic Remington / Later career
context_page_description: Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor and writer who specialized in depictions of the American Old West. A member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists, Remington's works are known for depicting the Western United States in the last quarter of the 19th-century, featuring such images as cowboys, American Indians, and the United States Cavalry.
context_section_description: Remington's fame made him a favorite of the Western Army officers fighting the last Native American battles. He was invited out West to make their portraits in the field and to gain them national publicity through Remington's articles and illustrations for Harper's Weekly, particularly General Nelson Miles, an Indian fighter who aspired to the presidency of the United States. In turn, Remington got exclusive access to the soldiers and their stories and boosted his reputation with the reading public as "The Soldier Artist". One of his 1889 paintings depicts eight cavalrymen shooting at Apaches in the rear as they attempt to outrun the Indians. Another painting that year depicts cavalrymen in an Arizona sandstorm. Remington wrote that the "heat was awful and the dust rose in clouds. Men get sulky and go into a comatose state – the fine alkali dust penetrates everything but the canteens."
  Remington arrived on the scene just after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in which 150 Sioux, mostly women and children, were killed. He reported the event as "The Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota", having hailed the Army's "heroic" actions toward the Indians. Some of the Miles paintings are monochromatic and have an almost "you-are-there" photographic quality, heightening the realism, as in The Parley (1898)
  Remington's Self-Portrait on a Horse (1890) shows the artist as he wished he was, not the pot-bellied Easterner weighing heavily on a horse, but a tough, lean cowboy heading for adventure with his trusty steed. It was the image his publishers worked hard to maintain as well.
  In His Last Stand (1890), a cornered bear in the middle of a prairie is brought down by dogs and riflemen, which may have been a symbolized treatment of the dying Indians he had witnessed. Remington's attitude toward Native Americans was typical for the time. He thought them unfathomable, fearless, superstitious, ignorant, and pitiless—and generally portrayed them as such. White men under attack were brave and noble.
  Through the 1890s, Remington took frequent trips around the U.S., Mexico, and abroad to gather ideas for articles and illustrations, but his military and cowboy subjects always sold the best, even as the Old West was playing out. In 1892, he painted A Cavalryman's Breakfast on the Plains. In 1895 Remington headed south and his illustrations and article on the "Florida crackers" (cowboys) were published by Harper's magazine. Gradually, he transitioned from the premiere chronicler-artist of the Old West to its most important historian-artist. He formed an effective partnership with Owen Wister, who became the leading writer of Western stories at the time. Having more confidence of his craft, Remington wrote, "My drawing is done entirely from memory. I never use a camera now. The interesting never occurs in nature as a whole, but in pieces. It's more what I leave out than what I add." Remington's focus continued on outdoor action and he rarely depicted scenes in gambling and dance halls typically seen in Western movies. He avoided frontier women as well. His painting A Misdeal (1897) is a rare instance of indoor cowboy violence. 
  Remington had developed a sculptor's 360-degree sense of vision but until a chance remark by playwright Augustus Thomas in 1895, Remington had not yet conceived of himself as a sculptor and thought of it as a separate art for which he had no training or aptitude. With help from friend and sculptor Frederick Ruckstull, Remington constructed his first armature and clay model, a "broncho buster" on a horse that was rearing on its hind legs—technically a very challenging subject.  After several months, the novice sculptor overcame the difficulties and had a plaster cast made, then bronze copies, which were sold at Tiffany's.  Remington was ecstatic about his new line of work, and though critical response was mixed, some labelling it negatively as "illustrated sculpture", it was a successful first effort earning him $6,000 over three years.
  During that busy year, Remington became 
caption: Off the Range (Coming Through the Rye), model 1902, cast 1903,National Gallery of Art
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