Cowboys |
Until Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show began touring in the 1880s, the American cowboy was seen as a rough character, herding cattle on the western grazing grounds.
Cody's cowboys and cowgirls rode bucking broncos and raced mustangs. They were gallant trick riders and sure shots in flamboyant get-ups!
The great western artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, helped perpetuate this image. The cowboy became a rescuer of damsels in distress or a rider for the Pony Express, tending to just about everything but cattle on the open range. |
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Charles Marion Russell
Charles Marion Russell
A Mix Up
1910
Oil on canvas, 30" x 48"
One of the best animal painters in the world is Charles M. Russell, of Montana, who is popularly known as the cowboy artist. His specialties are frontier scenes, wild Indian life, cattle pieces and natural history subjects, all of which are... embued with a truthfulness of character and detail which is possible only for those... who are to the manner born.
-- Nature's Realm (1891)
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Frederic Remington
Cutting Out a Steer
1888
Oil on academy board, 18" x 18"
Remington painted Cutting Out a Steer and other scenes to illustrate "The Roundup," a story by Theodore Roosevelt. It was published in an unknown magazine (probably Century) in 1888.
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Frederic Remington
The Arizona Cowboy
The Arizona Cowboy
1901
Pastel and graphite
on paper, 30" x 24"
Remington made short trips west to collect information and inspiration, but he completed his art works in his New York studio. He depicted the West with larger-than-life, but universal types.
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Frank Tenney Johnson
A Morning Shower
1927
Oil on canvas,
36" x 28"
Frank Tenney Johnson was a New York illustrator when he moved to California in the 1920s to paint cowboys, settlers, and Indians. He was a member of the informal group of California illustrators including Edward Borein and Maynard Dixon that became noted for their night scenes of the Santa Fe Trail. Johnson's illustrations were used as cover art for several books by western novelist Zane Grey.
Campbell, Suzan and Kathleen Ash-Milby. The American West: People, Places and Ideas. Santa Fe, NM: Western Edge Press, 2001, pp.144.
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John Edward Borein
The Passing Herd or Cattle and Horsemen
1930s
Watercolor on multi-ply board, 10 3/8" x 15 3/8"
The Cowboy is a distinct genus. He is unlike any other being...
-- Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, 1881
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William H. Dunton
Bronco Buster
1905
Oil on canvas, 39 5/16" x 25 3/16"
"When I was a little boy and lived in Maine I read everything about the West I could get my hands on... I lived the life in prospect. Then I lived it in actuality... with cowpunchers in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona - all along the cattle strip. Now that those days are gone, I live it in retrospect and in my pictures."
-- Buck Dunton in Taos: A Painter's Dream, Patricia Janis Broder; Boston: New York Graphic Society, (1980).
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Charles Schreyvogel
An Unexpected Enemy
1900
Oil on canvas, 33 3/4" x 24 3/4"
As a youth, Schreyvogel dreamed of the West after seeing Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. He finally went west in 1893; there he made sketches and photographs, and collected artifacts. He used these in the western art he created in his Hoboken, New Jersey, studio. After Frederic Remington's death in 1909, Schreyvogel was declared "America's greatest living interpreter of the Old West."
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Charles Schreyvogel
The Last Drop
1903
Bronze (23), 12" x 18" x 5"
Schreyvogel's most popular art works portray the "Indian-fighting army," usually shown in combat. He often modeled figures in clay. The Last Drop is among the few that were later cast in bronze.
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Frederic Remington
The Bronco Buster
1895
Bronze (ed. cast 252),
22 7/16" x 21 3/8" x 13 7/8"
Bronco Buster was Remington's first sculpture and one of his most popular. More than two hundred were cast in bronze from his clay model at the Roman Bronze Works in New York. He said that the technically daring sculpture was "a long work attended with great difficulties on my part." Still, he considered sculpture "satisfying to me, for my whole feeling is for form." (Craven, Sculpture in America)
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Ed Singer
Navajo Joe
1998
Mixed media on paper,
28 1/2" x 22"
Although we can trace the roots of "cowboy art" back to the late 1800s, it is still very much alive today -- but it has changed over time, just as the notion of cowboys has changed. "Today's cowboy is not created so much by occupation (tending cattle) as by attitude (identifying with the 'cowboy West')." This truth is reflected in contemporary artist Ed Singer's subtly humorous portrait, Navajo Joe, where we are reminded that sometimes, Indians are cowboys too.
Campbell, Suzan and Kathleen Ash-Milby. The American West: People, Places and Ideas. Santa Fe, NM: Western Edge Press, 2001, pp.93-98.
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