Amazon.com Review
Cowboys and horses, adventure in wide-open spaces. The mythos of the Old West comes alive in the paintings, drawings, and sculptures of Frederic Remington (1861-1909). Born during the Civil War and educated at Yale University, Remington committed his life to making portraits of the American frontier.
The Frederic Remington Art Museum Collection presents the collection of the museum founded by and housed in the former home of Remington's widow, Eva Caten Remington.
For much of his creative life, Remington worked as an illustrator for publications like Harper's Weekly. His renderings of life in the Old West were hugely successful, and some even accompanied an essay by President Theodore Roosevelt. His drawings displayed a strongly believable atmosphere:
[Remington's] illustrated scenes from the Apache War were rendered in a direct, spare and unsentimental style with an attention to detail that made them seem like snapshots of specific incidents. In truth, like much of Remington's reality, they were generalizations, not documents, created by extrapolating freely from firsthand observations.
Today Remington's work is often seen as problematic, and as evidence of the racist brutality that wiped out the American Indian culture and population. Of course, in Remington's time, his views of the frontier reflected those of most of the United States. Aside from these political complexities, Remington's work captures the imagery of a time and a landscape long gone. If you are fascinated by the Old West, then you should not miss this book. The book includes detailed commentary on the paintings and drawings, with 333 illustrations and 127 full-color plates. --J.P. Cohen
From Publishers Weekly
The Frederic Remington Art Museum Collection showcases the holdings of the Ogdensburg, N.Y., institution. Remington (1861-1909) remains an iconic, mythmaking painter and sculptor of the American post-Civil War West, as these 333 illustrations 127 in color, 206 in duotone readily show. Brian W. Dippie, who teaches art history at British Columbia's University of Victoria, offers a clear-eyed look at highlights from Remington's oeuvre, along with excerpts from the artist's letters, diaries and sketchbooks.
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