Frederic Remington

1861 - 1909
US

Frederic Remington was born in Canton, New York. The son of a newspaper editor, Remington decided early in life that he wished to be an artist and attended both the Yale Art School and the Art Students League of New York before going West. There he became a scout, a cowboy and a rancher. But, as he proved later, his greatest wish, like George Catlin's a half-century earlier, was to record the lives of Indians and frontiersmen honestly and without either sentimentality or savagery.

When he returned east after a failure of his sheep ranch, he traveled to Germany, Russia, and North Africa, and then became an artist and correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. His adventures over, he settled in New Rochelle, New York, to take up his career as writer and artist. Shortly before his death from acute appendicitis, he moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Remington not only wrote books on frontier life, but also illustrated them, sculpted, and painted. His extremely realistic, very detailed, and action packed works were extremely popular at the turn of the century. They leave a picture of the Indian as a lonely, almost completely subdued, outcast, and are an effective reminder of a picturesque, although sometimes painful, period in American history.