73 Facts About Frederic Remington

Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art.

Frederic Remington's works are known for depicting the Western United States in the last quarter of the 19th century and featuring such images as cowboys, American Indians, and the US Cavalry.

Frederic Remington's father was a Union army colonel in the American Civil War, whose family had arrived in America from England in 1637.

Frederic Remington was a newspaper editor and postmaster, and the staunchly Republican family was active in local politics.

One of Frederic Remington's great-grandfathers, Samuel Bascom, was a saddle maker by trade.

Frederic Remington's ancestors fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812.

Frederic Remington was related to three famous mountain men: Jedediah Smith, Jonathan T Warner, and Robert "Doc" Newell.

Colonel Frederic Remington was away at war during most of the first four years of his son's life.

Frederic Remington was the only child of the marriage, and received constant attention and approval.

Frederic Remington was an active child, large and strong for his age, who loved to hunt, swim, ride, and go camping.

Frederic Remington was a poor student though, particularly in math, which did not bode well for his father's ambitions for his son to attend West Point.

Frederic Remington began to make drawings and sketches of soldiers and cowboys at an early age.

The family moved to Ogdensburg, New York when Frederic Remington was eleven and he attended Vermont Episcopal Institute, a church-run military school, where his father hoped discipline would rein in his son's lack of focus and perhaps lead to a military career.

Frederic Remington then transferred to another military school where his classmates found the young Remington to be a pleasant fellow, a bit careless and lazy, good-humored, and generous of spirit but definitely not soldier material.

Frederic Remington enjoyed making caricatures and silhouettes of his classmates.

Frederic Remington attended the art school at Yale University and studied under John Henry Niemeyer.

Frederic Remington was the only male student in his first year.

Frederic Remington found that football and boxing were more interesting than the formal art training, particularly drawing from casts and still life objects.

Frederic Remington preferred action drawing and his first published illustration was a cartoon of a "bandaged football player" for the student newspaper, Yale Courant.

Frederic Remington left Yale in 1879 to tend to his ailing father, who had tuberculosis.

Frederic Remington's father died a year later, at 50, receiving respectful recognition from the citizens of Ogdensburg.

Frederic Remington hunted grizzly bears with Montague Stevens in New Mexico in 1895.

From that first trip, Harper's Weekly printed Frederic Remington's first published commercial effort, a re-drawing of a quick sketch on wrapping paper that he had mailed back east.

In 1883, Frederic Remington went to rural Kansas, south of the city of Peabody near the tiny community of Plum Grove, to try his hand at the booming sheep ranching and wool trade, as one of the "holiday stockmen", rich young easterners out to make a quick killing as ranch owners.

Frederic Remington invested his entire inheritance but found ranching to be a rough, boring, isolated occupation which deprived him of the finer things he was used to from East Coast life, and the real ranchers thought of him as lazy.

Frederic Remington continued sketching, but at this point his results were still cartoonish and amateur.

Frederic Remington went home to marry Eva Caten in 1884, and they returned to Kansas City immediately.

Frederic Remington was unhappy with his saloon life and was unimpressed by the sketches of saloon inhabitants that Remington regularly showed her.

Frederic Remington soon had enough success selling his paintings to locals to see art as a real profession.

Frederic Remington returned home again, his inheritance gone but his faith in his new career secured, reunited with his wife, and moved to Brooklyn.

Frederic Remington began studies at the Art Students League of New York and significantly bolstered his fresh though still rough technique.

Frederic Remington's timing was excellent, as newspaper interest in the dying West was escalating.

Frederic Remington submitted illustrations, sketches, and other works for publication with Western themes to Collier's and Harper's Weekly, as his recent Western experiences and his hearty, breezy "cowboy" demeanor gained him credibility with the eastern publishers looking for authenticity.

In 1886, Frederic Remington was sent to Arizona by Harper's Weekly on a commission as an artist-correspondent to cover the government's war against Geronimo.

Frederic Remington's works were selling well but garnered no prizes, as the competition was strong and masters like Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson were considered his superiors.

Later that year, Frederic Remington received a commission to do eighty-three illustrations for a book by Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail to be serialized in The Century Magazine before publication.

The 29-year-old Roosevelt had a similar Western adventure to Frederic Remington, losing money on a ranch in North Dakota the previous year but gaining experience which made him an "expert" on the West.

Frederic Remington had been selected by the American committee to represent American painting, over Albert Bierstadt whose majestic, large-scale landscapes peopled with tiny figures of pioneers and Indians were now considered passe.

Around this time, Frederic Remington made a gentleman's agreement with Harper's Weekly, giving the magazine an informal first option on his output but maintaining Frederic Remington's independence to sell elsewhere if desired.

Frederic Remington himself wrote to his friend the novelist Owen Wister:.

Frederic Remington's fame made him a favorite of the Western Army officers fighting the last Native American battles.

Frederic Remington was invited out West to make their portraits in the field and to gain them national publicity through Remington's articles and illustrations for Harper's Weekly, particularly General Nelson Miles, an Indian fighter who aspired to the presidency of the United States.

In turn, Frederic Remington got exclusive access to the soldiers and their stories and boosted his reputation with the reading public as "The Soldier Artist".

Frederic Remington arrived on the scene just after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in which 150 Sioux, mostly women and children, were killed.

Frederic Remington reported the event as "The Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota", having hailed the Army's "heroic" actions toward the Indians.

Frederic Remington thought them unfathomable, fearless, superstitious, ignorant and pitiless, and generally portrayed them as such.

In 1895 Frederic Remington headed south and his illustrations and article on the "Florida crackers" were published by Harper's magazine.

Frederic Remington formed an effective partnership with Owen Wister, who became the leading writer of Western stories at the time.

Frederic Remington's painting A Misdeal is a rare instance of indoor cowboy violence.

Frederic Remington had developed a sculptor's 360-degree sense of vision but until a chance remark by playwright Augustus Thomas in 1895, Frederic Remington had not yet conceived of himself as a sculptor and thought of it as a separate art for which he had no training or aptitude.

Frederic Remington was ecstatic about his new line of work, and though critical response was mixed, some labelling it negatively as "illustrated sculpture," it was a successful first effort earning him $6,000 over three years.

Frederic Remington was growing bored with routine illustration, and he wrote to Howard Pyle, the dean of American illustrators, that he had "done nothing but potboil of late".

Frederic Remington was still working very hard and spending seven days a week in his studio.

Frederic Remington was further irritated by the lack of his acceptance to regular membership by the Academy, likely because of his image as a popular, cocky, and ostentatious artist.

Frederic Remington kept up his contact with celebrities and politicos, and continued to woo Theodore Roosevelt, now the New York City Police Commissioner, by sending him complimentary editions of new works.

Frederic Remington was sent down to Cuba in company with celebrity journalist Richard Harding Davis, another friend and supporter of Roosevelt.

Frederic Remington's protagonist, a Cheyenne named Fire Eater, is a prototype Native American as viewed by Frederic Remington and many of his time.

Frederic Remington then returned to sculpture and produced his first works produced by the lost wax method, a higher-quality process than the earlier sand casting method, which he had employed.

Frederic Remington completed another novel in 1902, John Ermine of the Yellowstone, a modest success but a definite disappointment as it was completely overshadowed by the bestseller The Virginian, written by his sometime collaborator Owen Wister, which became a classic Western novel.

In 1903, Frederic Remington painted His First Lesson, set on an American-owned ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico.

Frederic Remington tried to sell his home in New Rochelle to get further away from urbanization.

Frederic Remington died after an emergency appendectomy led to peritonitis on December 26,1909.

The Frederic Remington House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Frederic Remington was the great-uncle of the artist Deborah Remington.

Frederic Remington's style was naturalistic, sometimes impressionistic, and usually veered away from the ethnographic realism of earlier Western artists such as George Catlin.

Frederic Remington's focus was firmly on the people and animals of the West, portraying men almost exclusively, and the landscape was usually of secondary importance, unlike the members and descendants of the contemporary Hudson River School, such as Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran, who glorified the vastness of the West and the dominance of nature over man.

Frederic Remington took artistic liberties in his depictions of human action, for the sake of his readers' and publishers' interest.

Frederic Remington provided the concept of the project, its factual content, and its illustrations and Wister supplied the stories, sometimes altering Frederic Remington's ideas.

Frederic Remington was one of the first American artists to illustrate the true gait of the horse in motion, as validated by the famous sequential photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.

An early advocate of the photoengraving process over wood engraving for magazine reproduction of illustrative art, Frederic Remington became an accepted expert in reproduction methods, which helped gain him strong working relationships with editors and printers.

Frederic Remington was an effective publicist and promoter of his art.

Frederic Remington insisted for his originals to be handled carefully and returned to him in pristine condition so that he could sell them.

Frederic Remington carefully regulated his output to maximize his income and kept detailed notes about his works and his sales.