Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Great American Artists - Frederic Remington


Frederic Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor and writer whose favorite subject was the old American west, including cowboys, indians and the U.S Cavalry. Remington was the son of a U.S Army Colonel from the Civil War. His father had great hopes that his son would attend West Point and follow in his footsteps as a soldier, but Frederic new from an early age that this was not the life for him. He was very interested in illustrating and painting from his early school days and he was not a particularly industrious or motivated young man. He did, however, venture out west and experienced the life of a settler firsthand. He even tried his hand at ranching for a time, but found it to be uninspiring, boring and a bit rough for his tastes. He did have, obviously, a great eye for the ways of the west and a unique ability to depict it in paintings and stories and then later in sculptures. In his career he covered the U.S. Government's war against Geronimo, illustrated a book by Teddy Roosevelt and was a war correspondent and illustrator during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and witnessed the assault by the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill.
When the Rough Riders returned to the U.S., they presented their courageous leader Roosevelt with Remington’s bronze statuette, The Broncho Buster, which is pictured above. In
1888, he had two of his paintings used for reproduction on U. S. Postal stamps.


No comments:

Post a Comment