Frederic Remington's Winter Campaign

Frederic Remington (1861-1909), The Winter Campaign, 1909, oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 40 1/2 inches. Clara S. Peck Fund purchase. 87.11

 Remington, a New Yorker, was fascinated by cowboys. Just as other artists feared that Native Americans would soon vanish from the West, Remington feared that "the wild riders and the vacant land" of the West he loved were about to disappear. It was his goal to "try to record some facts" of western life. Beginning in the 1880s he made short trips west to gather information and inspiration, completing his artworks in his New York studio. His figures represent universal types rather than individuals. They are larger than life -- they are the West.

  In 1881, Remington sold his first illustration of a Western subject to "Harper's Weekly".  Frederic Remington had only briefly toured the West a year earlier as a war reporter, but the drama of the Indian Wars was coming to a violent climax. Although that first sketch was redrawn by staff artists, Remington steadily improved his work until by 1886, he was one of the most popular illustrators in America.  By and large, his subject matter was the West; the romance and drama that he found there shaped his entire career.  Of all those artists who have chosen the West as their subject, from George Catlin and Karl Bodmer, to the present, none are more widely known than Remington.  His work was circulated to a huge audience through popular magazines like Harper's and Colliers;  books, such as Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha", or Francis Parkman's "Oregon Trail"; and through the issuance of prints, such as the ones displayed here.