1861-1909 Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 - December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U.S. Cavalry. Remington was the most successful Western illustrator in the ??Golden Age?? of illustration at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, so much so that the other Western artists such as Charles Russell and Charles Schreyvogel were known during Remington??s life as members of the ??School of Remington??. His style was naturalistic, sometimes impressionistic, and usually veered away from the ethnographic realism of earlier Western artists such as George Catlin. His focus was firmly on the people and animals of the West, with landscape usually of secondary importance, unlike the members and descendants of the 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. He took artistic liberties in his depictions of human action, and for the sake of his readers?? and publishers?? interest. Though always confident in his subject matter, Remington was less sure about his colors, and critics often harped on his palette, but his lack of confidence drove him to experiment and produce a great variety of effects, some very true to nature and some imagined. His collaboration with Owen Wister on The Evolution of the Cowpuncher, published by Harper??s Monthly in September 1893, was the first statement of the mythical cowboy in American literature, spawning the entire genre of Western fiction, films, and theater that followed. Remington provided the concept of the project, its factual content, and its illustrations and Wister supplied the stories, sometimes altering Remington??s ideas. (Remington??s prototype cowboys were Mexican rancheros but Wister made the American cowboys descendants of Saxons??in truth, they were both partially right, as the first American cowboys were both the ranchers who tended the cattle and horses of the American Revolutionary army on Long Island and the Mexicans who ranched in the Arizona and California territories).  Related Paintings of Frederick Remington :. | The Fall of the Cowboy | The Advance Guard | The Fall of the Cowboy | When Heart is Bad | His First Lesson |
Related Artists:
Clifton Tomson
British , 1775-1828
Joseph Ducreux
1735-1802 French French painter, pastellist and engraver. He lived in Paris from 1760 and from 1762 kept a list of his works. Among the portraits he completed in his early years were those in pastel of the well-known connoisseurs Pierre-Jean Mariette, the Comte de Caylus and Ange-Laurent de la Live de July (all untraced), which apparently were copies after Maurice-Quentin de La Tour. Ducreux has traditionally been seen as de La Tour favourite pupil, while Jean-Baptiste Greuze is supposed to have initiated him into oil painting. From his age, it can be assumed that by the time Ducreux reached Paris he had already acquired a grounding in his art.
Paton, Sir Joseph Noel
English, 1824-1901 Scottish painter, illustrator, sculptor and collector. From his earliest years he drew avidly, seeking inspiration from ancient history, the Bible and from tales of romance and legend. His father was a keen antiquarian, and his habit of collecting items of historical interest and artistic merit was inherited by his son who amassed a collection, which included arms and armour, now in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. He used items from the collection in a large number of his paintings such as 'I wonder who lived in there?' (1867; Mrs Eva No?l Findlay priv. col.), the Fairy Raid (1867; Glasgow A.G. & Mus.), In die Malo (1881) and Oskold and the Ell? Maids (1874). After three years as head designer in one of the biggest sewn-muslin factories in Paisley, Strathclyde, Paton went to London in 1842. Although he did not take a studentship at the Royal Academy Schools, it was there that he met John Everett Millais, and they became lifelong friends. He won prizes in the Westminster Hall competitions in 1845 and 1847,