Frederic Remington - Oil Painting Reproductions

His technical finesse made the arid beauty of the West come alive, and him, a coveted artist of the time. He achieved greatness as an artist for his insight into the valiant character of the American settlers. Although he was known for depicting the Wild West, surprisingly, Remington lived in the East for most of his life. His depiction of the West, as conjured by the East unaware of the actual history and society of the West, is what made his creations popular.

Born in Canton, he was drawn to the thrill of hunting, swimming, riding and camping, which influenced his paintings of outdoor scenes. Early in his life, he also enjoyed making cartoons and silhouettes of his classmates. While a student of Yale University in the School of Fine Arts, he practiced action drawing and his first illustration was a cartoon of a “bandaged football player”, which earned him recognition. He made professional tours for several journals; he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York to support his amateur techniques while continuing with the reportage of war fronts.

He nurtured an extraordinary interest in casual life and had immense curiosity about the indigenous tribes and cowboys, the quintessential symbol of the Wild West, the cattle, wide open spaces and riders. Remington made extensive tours across America, devoting his time mostly to drawing the areas around the new American border and its people. Using his western sketches, he applied to several leading magazines of the time for work, following which, he endeavored to prove himself as an artist. He achieved considerable success eventually and his career developed into a highly prolific one.

Remington abandoned illustration in the mid-1880s and took up oil painting and watercolors. This change required he learn the complexities of color, something that intimidated him. He continued to paint Western motifs using photographs and research accumulated on various expeditions to the front. Though he painted several impressionistic pieces in the last few years of his life, he never really implemented all the methods of impressionism, nor did he completely remove the narrative aspect from his art.

Remington’s paintings were sometimes naturalistic and sometimes impressionistic to avoid blatant realism of his contemporaries. His vibrant and animated subjects were painted against the backdrop of landscapes that assumed secondary role in his paintings; his aim was to provide scope for viewers to imagine. He seemed confused about his use of colors; sometimes ink and wash, else watercolors, or even pencil sketch. His subjects included soldiers, horses, cowboys and Native Americans, painted chiefly from his experience in the Wild West, and portrayed with thoughtfulness. He is often credited as the first to paint the galloping horse, breaking from the conventional “hobby horse”. Sometimes criticized for exaggeration, Remington’s believe was an artist’s imagination should capture the invisible and the anticipated.

Remington was the creator of over 3000 paintings and drawings, 22 bronze sculptures, 1 Broadway play, more than 100 stories and articles, and 1 novel. His outstanding realism and drama fueled the imagination of the entire country; his representation of the West was adopted by all Americans. The closing of the frontier at the end of the 19th century was immortalized in his art. The West was portrayed as a land of individualism, freedom and bravery, an overall positive quality that Americans wished to envision themselves as. To define the national character, Remington created a fantastical image that is still replicated in pop culture, be it advertisements for cigarettes like “Marlboro Man” or John Ford’s western movies. His visions are perceived as exclusively American even today.

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