TS American Reallism 4C.qxp
16/12/2008
13:53
Page 70
— American Realism —
Bitter and disappointed with the hand he had been dealt, the
Everywhere Remington travelled, he picked up cowboy skills with
nineteen-year-old dude turned west to finally go where he had
pistol and lariat. He was an expert horseman and never backed away
always dreamed of cowboys, Indians and adventure. He headed for
from a fight in some smoky saloon. Everywhere he went he sketched
Montana in 1881 looking for an investment that would finance the
with pencil, ink and crayon. He also collected western artefacts: boots,
lifestyle he had in mind. He discovered that both cattle and mining –
gloves, belts, Indian crafts, bits and pieces of a Western way of life that
the West’s main industries – were too expensive. He began
was fading as the railway pushed towards California, the Northern
wandering across the prairie coming across the huge buffalo herds
Plains and down through the Texas Panhandle. The telegraph linked
and places where hunters had decimated the beasts for their hides
towns together with cities in the East and land speculators carved up
and tongues leaving the rest to rot. He met up with the blue-shirt
the unfenced prairie for trains full of European immigrants arriving by
U.S. Army patrolling for roving bands of Sioux and Comanche Native
the boatload in Eastern and Western ports.
Americans who were off their reservations. The massacre of General Custer’s command on the Little Bighorn River had occurred in 1876
Harpers Weekly Magazine published his first commercial drawing on
and the tribes were still unsettled.
the cover of an 1883 edition, sharing the credit with another artist
Frederic Remington, Rounded-Up, 1901. Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 121.9 cm. Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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