Frederic Remington (1861–1909) is regarded as one of the most gifted painters of the American West. His first images of the American West appeared as illustrations in popular journals.
However, as his career grew, he turned away from illustration and concentrated on painting and sculpture. In this article, we’ll look at some of his famous paintings to indicate his career growth.
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Frederic Remington
Art lovers and scholars agree that although it is known that the famous artist Frederic Remington is best known for his works of art depicting the American West, it is difficult to pick his best-known works – especially works indicating the growth in his career. He created more than 3,000 works of art, almost all of which are pieces of excellence.
To understand his art better, let’s first look at Frederic Remington’s history. He was an only child and always was an active child, and he loved hunting, swimming, camping, and horse riding. From a very young age, he was interested in the American West cowboys with their horses and soldiers, the cavalry, and the Native American people.
He was always making drawings and sketches of cowboys and soldiers. And at school, he drew caricatures and silhouettes of his classmates. But, he thought of art only as a sideline. His goal was to become an excellent journalist.
Learn about Frederic Remington’s Art – the Beginning and Growth
Remington didn’t foresee a full-time career in the arts, but he still attended the art school at Yale University. However, because he was not impressed with the training classes, he started to create action drawings. His first published illustration (in the Yale student newspaper) was a cartoon of a bandaged football player.
As a journalist, Remington made 16 trips to the American West. But on those trips, he also made sketches and notes and took black-and-white photographs of the landscape and people of the American West. During his first trip, he sent a sketch back east, and “Harper’s Weekly” printed a re-drawing of it. This was Remington’s very first published commercial drawing.
In 1886, “Harper’s Weekly “sent him to Arizona on a commission as an artist-correspondent to cover the war against Geronimo. He never found Geronimo, but he made many drawings and sketches for his later paintings. During the trip, he also noted the natural colors of the West. Interestingly, art critics of that time criticized his colors as “unnatural” while all the colors were based on actual observation.
He later became a half-owner of a saloon in Kansas City but continued sketching. Then, when his wife left him and the saloon business took a knock, He started to sketch and paint earnestly.
Frederic Remington Art
When Remington started his professional career as a painter, he mostly produced ink and wash drawings for commercial reproduction in black-and-white. As he grew in his career, he started to create watercolors and began to sell his work at art exhibitions.
Frederic Remington inspired his paintings by interacting with a cowboy and his horse. Furthermore, he was intrigued by the simple and humble life of the cowboys.
Let’s now have a look at two of his paintings. First, we’ll look at a painting at the beginning of his career and one of his last cowboy paintings. Then we’ll look at his paintings with a nocturnal theme – his so-called Night Paintings.
A Dash for the Timber
Although other American artists before Remington had painted cowboys on horseback, Remington was the first American painter who successfully depicted horses in full gallop anatomically correct.
Artists usually depicted galloping horses with all four legs pointing out. Remington, however, captured the movement of galloping horses correctly.
His early painting “A Dash for the Timber” shows a group of cowboys riding at full gallop to get away from American Indians chasing them on horseback. The horses seemed as if captured in a specific moment of time, with their leg positions and movement depicted correctly.
The Fall of the Cowboy
Later in his career, he realized the cowboy era was ending. So in 1895, he created “The Fall of the Cowboy.” The painting symbolizes the “death” of the cowboys – mainly because of industrial development. With this painting, he paid homage to all cowboys and their freedom that was disappearing.
With “The Fall of the Cowboy,” Remington demonstrated effectively that the cowboys’ duties were diminished to opening and closing gates.
The two cowboys depicted are at a gate in contrast with the traditional “no-barrier” life of the cowboys. In addition, the snow symbolizes “winter” that has arrived for cowboy life. But some art historians interpret the painting more positively. According to them, it illustrates that when you leave an era, a “new life” might be waiting.
Frederic Remington Night Paintings
One of the most important growth elements in Frederic Remington’s art was his exploration of painting darkness. In the early 1900s, he started with a group of paintings with their subjects, the color of night. Then, he created at least seventy paintings exploring the technical and aesthetic options of painting darkness.
But his “darkness paintings” are actually filled with different colors and light. For example, he depicted scenes with moonlight, firelight, and candlelight. According to many art historians, his use of “color in darkness” was due to his interest in modern technological innovations – especially flash photography and electricity, which rapidly changed the character of night and darkness.
According to art scholars and historians, his later “darkness” paintings also reflect that the artist Frederic Remington knew that the cowboy world he had known as a young man was disappearing. Nowadays, many of his nocturnal works are regarded as deeply personal paintings.
Conclusion
When you look at the life and works of the artist Frederic Remington, you find that he grew from an excellent illustrator to a most famous painter and sculptor. The growth is visible in his works.
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