230 Frederic Remington 1861-1909 Bronco Buster Bronze, cast No 236 22 ¾ inches high Signed with copyright; Roman Bronze Works N-Y
229 Thomas Moran 1837-1926 Castle Rock, Green River, WY (detail) Oil on canvas 20 x 30 inches Signed lower right and dated 1907; Initialed, titled and dated verso
Estimate: $75,000 - 125,000 Provenance: J.N. Bartfield Galleries, NY. Private Collection, CO.
Estimate: $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Literature: Michael Edward Shapiro. Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1981, pp. 37-69, 95, and throughout (other examples).
Provenance: Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1937 J.B. Saunders, Houston, Texas, 1975 Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma William C. Foxley, California J. N. Bartfield Galleries, New York Private collection, Colorado Private collection, Texas The Russell: Sale to Benefit the CM Russell Museum, 2016 Private collection
By 1893, Frederic Remington was beginning to worry that the era of the cowboy and the free range was vanishing fast. Seeking what was left of the cowboy way of life, he traveled to the Southwest and crossed over into Mexico, where he lighted on “Patron Jack’s” enormous San Jose de Bavicora ranch, situated in rugged Apache country some 200 miles northwest of Chihuahua. Already America’s foremost illustrator of life in the West, Remington was searching for something that was slipping away, something he found south of the border, something that would take him back in time. Bavicora would point the way from pen and ink, watercolor, and oil paint, to wax and bronze and led to his best known, and perhaps greatest work–Bronco Buster. Remington had written: “[The cowboy] was a combination of the Kentucky or Tennessee man with the Spanish.” He would find this combination in “Patron Jack” Follamsbee (Jack Gilbert). Jack had been born into a Kentucky racehorse family, but, in a spirit of adventure, he wrested Bavicora from the Mexican wilderness and earned the loyalty of his vaqueros and foremen through sheer audacity. On his return to his home in New Rochelle, New York, a friend came to visit Remington in his studio. Observing the ease with which Remington moved figures around in the picture plane, the friend, a playwright, advised him that since he worked in three dimensions in his paintings, he should give sculpture a try. Remington went to work, creating Bronco Buster in sculptor’s wax. What remained was to find a foundry to cast the piece. The problem, according to Remington’s sculptor friends, was that the piece was so top heavy it would not stand. Remington rejected this criticism and sought out the Henry Bonnard Works, and then, later, the Roman Bronze Works run by the dashing Riccardo Bertelli. These European artisans had brought techniques to America that dated back to the Greeks, techniques lost and rediscovered in Renaissance Italy that would allow a work like Bronco Buster to be cast in bronze and stand freely. Think about this: every image, every piece of footage of the Oval Office in the White House features Theodore Roosevelt’s Bronco Buster. Remington’s image of the rider trying to master the bucking bronc is undoubtedly the single most recognizable artistic conception of the American West.
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Michael D. Greenbaum. Icons of the West: Frederic Remington’s Sculpture. Ogdensburg, NY: Frederic Remington Art Museum, 1996, pp. 51-65, 178 and throughout (other examples).
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