Frederic Remington

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In 1886, Remington was sent to Arizona by Harper's Weekly on a commission as an artist-correspondent to cover the government's war against Geronimo. Although he never caught up with Geronimo, Remington did acquire many authentic artifacts to be used later as props, and made many photos and sketches valuable for later paintings. He also made notes on the true colors of the West, such as "shadows of horses should be a cool carmine & Blue", to supplement the black-and-white photos. Ironically, art critics later criticized his palette as "primitive and unnatural" even though it was based on actual observation.

After returning East, Remington was sent by Harper's Weekly to cover the 1886 Charleston earthquake. To expand his commission work, he also began doing drawings for Outing magazine. His first year as a commercial artist had been successful, earning Remington $1,200, almost triple that of a typical teacher. He had found his life's work and bragged to a friend, "That's a pretty good break for an ex cow-puncher to come to New York with $30 and catch on it 'art'."

For commercial reproduction in black-and-white, he produced ink and wash drawings. As he added watercolor, he began to sell his work in art exhibitions. His works were selling well but garnered no prizes, as the competition was strong and masters like Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson were considered his superiors. A trip to Canada in 1887 produced illustrations of the Blackfoot, the Crow Nation, and the Canadian Mounties, which were eagerly enjoyed by the reading public.

Later that year, Remington received a commission to do eighty-three illustrations for a book by Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail to be serialized in The Century Magazine before publication. The 29-year-old Roosevelt had a similar Western adventure to Remington, losing money on a ranch in North Dakota the previous year but gaining experience which made him an "expert" on the West. The assignment gave Remington's career a big boost and forged a lifelong connection with Roosevelt.

His full-color oil painting Return of the Blackfoot War Party was exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the New York Herald commented that Remington would "one day be listed among our great American painters". Though not admired by all critics, Remington's work was deemed "distinctive" and "modern". By now, he was demonstrating the ability to handle complex compositions with ease, as in Mule Train Crossing the Sierras (1888), and to show action from all points of view. His status as the new trendsetter in Western art was solidified in 1889 when he won a second-class medal at the Paris Exposition. He had been selected by the American committee to represent American painting, over Albert Bierstadt whose majestic, large-scale landscapes peopled with tiny figures of pioneers and Indians were now considered passé.

Around this time, Remington made a gentleman's agreement with Harper's Weekly, giving the magazine an informal first option on his output but maintaining Remington's independence to sell elsewhere if desired. As a bonus, the magazine launched a massive promotional campaign for Remington, stating that "He draws what he knows, and he knows what he draws." Though laced with blatant puffery (common for the time) claiming that Remington was a bona fide cowboy and Indian scout, the effect of the campaign was to raise Remington to the equal of the era's top illustrators, Howard Pyle and Charles Dana Gibson.

His first one-man show, in 1890, presented twenty-one paintings at the American Art Galleries and was very well received. With success all but assured, Remington became established in society. His personality, his "pseudo-cowboy" speaking manner, and his "Wild West" reputation were strong social attractions. His biography falsely promoted some of the myths he encouraged about his Western experiences.

Remington's regular attendance at celebrity banquets and stag dinners, however, though helpful to his career, fostered prodigious eating and drinking which caused his girth to expand alarmingly. Obesity became a constant problem for him from then on. Among his urban friends and fellow artists, he was "a man among men, a deuce of a good fellow" but notable because he (facetiously) "never drew but two women in his life, and they were failures" (this estimation failed to account for his female Native American subjects).

In 1890, Remington and his wife moved to New Rochelle, New York to have both more living space and extensive studio facilities, and also with the hope of gaining more exercise. The community was close to New York City affording easy access to the publishing houses and galleries necessary for the artist, and also rural enough to provide him with the space he needed for horseback riding, and other physical activities that relieved the long hours of concentration required by his work. Moreover, an artists' colony had developed in the town, so that the Remingtons counted among their neighbors writers, actors, and artists such as Francis Wilson, Julian Hawthorne, Edward Kemble, and Augustus Thomas.

The Remingtons' substantial Gothic revival house was situated at 301 Webster Avenue, on a prestigious promontory known as Lathers Hill. A sweeping lawn rolled south toward Long Island Sound, providing views on three sides of the beautiful Westchester County countryside. Remington called it Endion, an Ojibwa word meaning "the place where I live." In the early years, no real studio existed at Endion and Remington did most of his work in a large attic under the home's front gable where he stored materials collected on his many western excursions. Later he used his library on the main floor, a larger, more comfortable room that soon took on the cluttered appearance of an atelier. However, neither situation was completely satisfactory: the space was limited, the light was less than adequate, and the surroundings were generally uninspiring. In the spring of 1896 Remington retained the New Rochelle architect O. William Degen to plan a studio addition to the house. An article in the New Rochelle Pioneer of April 26 touted the "fine architectural design" of the studio. Remington himself wrote to his friend the novelist Owen Wister:

Later career

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 had wished, 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 US, 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 further immersed in military matters, inventing a new type of ammunition carrier; but his patented invention was not accepted for use by the War Department. His favorite subject for magazine illustration was now military scenes, though he admitted, "Cowboys are cash with me". Sensing the political mood of that time, he was looking forward to a military conflict which would provide the opportunity to be a heroic war correspondent, giving him both new subject matter and the excitement of battle. He was growing bored with routine illustration, and he wrote to Howard Pyle, the dean of American illustrators, that he had "done nothing but potboil of late". (Earlier, he and Pyle, in a gesture of mutual respect, had exchanged paintings: Pyle's painting of a dead pirate for Remington's of a rough and ready cowpuncher). He was still working very hard and spending seven days a week in his studio.

Remington was further irritated by the lack of his acceptance to regular membership by the Academy, likely because of his image as a popular, cocky, and ostentatious artist. Remington kept up his contact with celebrities and politicos, and continued to woo Theodore Roosevelt, now the New York City Police Commissioner, by sending him complimentary editions of new works. Despite Roosevelt's great admiration for Remington, he never purchased a Remington painting or drawing.

Remington's association with Roosevelt paid off, however, when the artist was hired as a war correspondent and illustrator for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in January 1897. Remington was sent down to Cuba in company with celebrity journalist Richard Harding Davis, another friend and supporter of Roosevelt. Cuba's apparent peacefulness left them nothing to report on. That led to this famous but probably apocryphal exchange of telegrams between Remington and Hearst:

Remington did return to New Rochelle while Davis remained until February, when he booked return passage on the P&O steamer Olivette. Aboard the ship, he met Clemencia Arango, who said her brother was a colonel in the insurgence, that she had been deported for her revolutionary activities, and that she had been stripsearched by the Spanish officials before boarding. Shocked by her story, Davis dispatched this news from Tampa to Hearst on the 10th. The front page of the Journal for the 12th was dominated Remington's sensationalist illustration, run across five columns of newsprint, of Arango stripped naked on the ship's deck, in public, surrounded by four male Spanish officials. Hearst deemed it the "Olivette Incident." The issue sold a record number of copies, almost a million, partly on the strength of Remington's image of a naked humiliated female resistance fighter. The next day Arango called Remington's version largely a fabrication.

Two days later, on the 15th, the USS Maine exploded. As the Spanish–American War took shape into April, the artist returned to Cuba to see military action for the first time. It was the "most wrenching, disillusioning experience of Remington's life." As he witnessed the assault on San Juan Hill by American forces, including those led by Roosevelt, his heroic conception of war was shattered by the actual horror of jungle fighting and the deprivations he faced in camp. His reports and illustrations upon his return focused not on heroic generals but also on the troops, as in his Scream of the Shrapnel (1899), which depicts a deadly ambush on American troops by an unseen enemy.

When the Rough Riders returned to the US, they presented their courageous leader Roosevelt with Remington's bronze statuette, The Bronco Buster, which the artist proclaimed, "the greatest compliment I ever had.... After this everything will be mere fuss." Roosevelt responded, "There could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment."

In 1898, he achieved the public honor of having two paintings used for reproduction on US Postal stamps. In 1900, as an economy move, Harper's dropped Remington as their star artist. To compensate for the loss of work, Remington wrote and illustrated a full-length novel, The Way of an Indian, which was intended for serialization by a Hearst publication but was not published until five years later in Cosmopolitan. Remington's protagonist, a Cheyenne named Fire Eater, is a prototype Native American as viewed by Remington and many of his time.

Remington then returned to sculpture and produced his first works produced by the lost wax method, a higher-quality process than the earlier sand casting method, which he had employed. By 1901, Collier's was buying Remington's illustrations on a steady basis. As his style matured, Remington portrayed his subjects in every light of day. His nocturnal paintings, very popular in his late life, such as A Taint on the Wind, Scare in the Pack Train and Fired On, are more impressionistic and loosely painted and focus on the unseen threat.

Remington completed another novel in 1902, John Ermine of the Yellowstone, a modest success but a definite disappointment as it was completely overshadowed by the bestseller The Virginian, written by his sometime collaborator Owen Wister, which became a classic Western novel. A stage play based on John Ermine failed in 1904. After John Ermine, Remington decided he would soon quit writing and illustrating (he had drawn over 2700 illustrations) to focus on sculpture and painting.

In 1903, Remington painted His First Lesson, set on an American-owned ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico. The hands wear heavy chaps, starched white shirts, and slouch-brimmed hats. In his paintings, Remington sought to let his audience "take away something to think about – to imagine." In 1905, Remington had a major publicity coup when Collier's devoted an entire issue to the artist, showcasing his latest works. It was that same year that the president of the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) commissioned Remington to create a large sculpture of a cowboy for Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, which was erected in 1908 on a jutting rock along Kelly Drive, a site that Remington had specifically chosen for the piece after he had a horseman pose for him in the exact location. Philadelphia's Cowboy (1908) was Remington's first and only large-scale bronze, and the sculpture is one of the earliest examples of site-specific art in the United States.

Remington's Explorers series, depicting older historical events in Western US history, did not fare well with the public or the critics. The financial panic of 1907 caused a slow down in his sales and in 1908, fantasy artists, such as Maxfield Parrish, became popular with the public and with commercial sponsors. Remington tried to sell his home in New Rochelle to get further away from urbanization. One night, he made a bonfire in his yard and burned dozens of his oil paintings that had been used for magazine illustration (worth millions of dollars today) to make an emphatic statement that he was done with illustration forever. He wrote that "there is nothing left but my landscape studies."

Near the end of his life, he moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut. In his final two years, under the influence of The Ten, he was veering more heavily to Impressionism, and he regretted that he was studio bound (by virtue of his declining health) and could not follow his peers, who painted "plein air."

Remington died after an emergency appendectomy led to peritonitis on December 26, 1909. His extreme obesity (of nearly 300 pounds) had complicated the anesthesia and the surgery, and chronic appendicitis was cited in the postmortem examination as an underlying factor in his death.

The Frederic Remington House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965. He was the great-uncle of the artist Deborah Remington. In 2009, the United States Congress enacted legislation renaming the historic Post Office in Ogdensburg, New York the Frederic Remington Post Office Building.

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