Frederic Remington

Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861 – 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in portraying Old Bill was growing. He was able to offer authenticity to the East Coast publishers as someone who has spent time in the West as a young man, although much of his experience was exaggerated. He went on to build his career as an illustrator, journalist, writer, sculptor and painter based on his idealised version of the Old West.

One of his many claims to fame was his collaboration with Owen Wister on ‘The Evolution of the Cowpuncher’ ,published by Harper’s Monthly in 1893, was the first depiction of the mythical cowboy in American literature and which went on to spawn the whole ‘Western’ genre. He gave up writing and illustrating in 1904 after the failure of a stage play of one of his novels ‘John Ermine of the Yellowstone’ and decided to focus on sculpture and painting.

Remington’s originals now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars