Frederic Remington

1861-1909

American Artist

Remington was born in Canton, New York. His boyhood fostered a lifelong love of horses and the outdoors. Remington was expected to graduate from college, but spent only a year and a half at Yale University playing football and studying art. After his father's death, he traveled to Montana in 1881, and experienced his first impression of the West. The year he spent there was the only time he actually made the West his home, although he made many trips. Remington's major paintings were tributes to the Wild West of fantasy. They drew on the artist's experiences for their sense of place and authentic details, but on his imagination for their subject matter. Remington's achievement was to fuse observation and imagination so seamlessly that his contemporaries assumed he had actually witnessed what he portrayed. In 1895 he turned to sculpting and completed twenty-two sculptures, many which became the defining masterpieces of the Western art tradition.