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The Bronco Buster

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The Bronco Buster

1895
bronze
26 in. x 19 in. x 14 in. (66.04 cm x 48.26 cm x 35.56 cm)
Bequest of Florence Andrews Todd in Memory of her Mother, Sally W. Andrews, 1937.8

Frederic Remington
American
1861–1909

ON VIEW

The illustrator, painter, and sculptor Frederic Remington was one of the so-called Independent American artists who captured the disappearing Wild West during the late nineteenth century. A native of Canton, New York, Remington enrolled in 1878 at Yale University, where he took a drawing course taught by John Niemeyer (1839-1932). After his father's death, he left school and in 1881, at the age of eighteen, he went west. He roamed from Mexico to Canada, rode the wagon trains and cattle trails from Texas to Montana, prospected for gold in the Apache country of the Arizona Territory, and worked as a hired cowboy. He became the owner of a small ranch in Kansas and part owner of a cowboy saloon in Kansas City.

He returned east in 1885, broke but determined to become an artist. In New York City, he enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied with the painter J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) in 1886. The following year, his first sketches were published in Harper's Weekly and Outing. Remington quickly became one of the most popular and highly paid illustrators. His Pitching Bronco for Harper's Weekly, which appeared in 1892, would serve as the preliminary sketch for his first piece of sculpture, The Bronco Buster.

Following a lull in the reception of his paintings in 1892, Remington began to look for another medium. Watching the sculptor Frederic W. Ruckstull (1853-1942) modeling his equestrian sculpture of Major General John F. Hartrauft in 1894, Remington was encouraged to begin modeling. He started work on The Bronco Buster, and by January 1895 Remington wrote his friend the writer Owen Wister, "my watercolors will fade-but I am to endure in bronze-even rust does not touch-I am modeling-I find I do well-I am doing a cowboy on a bucking bronco" (FR to Owen Wister, 1895, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). By the end of March he could crow to his Yale College classmate Poultney Bigelow, "It's the biggest business I ever did and if some of these rich sinners over here will cough up and buy a couple of dozen I will go into the 'mud business'" (FR to Poultney Bigelow, 1895, Poultney Bigelow Collection of Remington Letters, Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY).

The Henry-Bonnard Company reproduced The Bronco Buster, as Remington copyrighted it on October 15, 1895: "Equestrian Statue of Cowboy mounted upon and Breaking in Wild horse standing on hind feet. Cowboy holding onto horse's mane with left hand while right hand is extended upwards.

The bronze was exhibited in the windows of Tiffany and Co., on West 16th Street in Union Square, New York City. The bronzes were sold for $250 each. Harper's Weekly published an illustration of the sculpture in its October 19, 1895, issue. The art critic Arthur Hoeber wrote in the text that accompanied the illustration: "Breaking away from the narrow limits and restraints of pen and ink on flat surface, Remington has stampeded, as it were, to the greater possibilities of plastic form in clay" (Harper's Weekly, October 19, 1985, p. 993). Century Magazine followed with four views of the sculpture. The foundry issued a circular on the piece with an endorsement by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (q.v.). During the next several years, more than forty-five castings of The Bronco Buster were sold. Before 1900, seventy sand-cast bronzes were made by Henry-Bonnard. The figure and base were cast separately with the reins, stirrups, whip, and other details added in the process of finishing and chasing. The Currier cast was made in the very first years of the production.

During the next three years, Remington would complete other bronzes on the western theme: The Wounded Bunkie (1896), The Wicked Pony (1898), and The Scalp (1898). After 1900, Remington turned his production over to the newly formed Roman Bronze Company in Greenpoint, New York. Roman Bronze carried out "lost wax" castings of The Bronco Buster; some 305 casts were done in the twenty-three-and-a-half-inch size and approximately twenty-two in a larger thirty-two-inch size, which Remington modeled in 1909.

During his lifetime, Remington completed over twenty separate sculptures, but the most popular of all was The Bronco Buster. Indeed, The Bronco Buster became the most popular American bronze statuette of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The "Rough Riders" presented then Colonel Theodore Roosevelt with a bronze cast of the piece when they were mustered out in 1898.

JHD

REFERENCES

Beatrice G. Proske. Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture. Murrells Inlet, SC: Brookgreen Gardens, 1943.

Michael E. Shapiro. Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington. Ex. cat. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1981.

Peggy and Harold Samuels. Frederic Remington: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.

Michael E. Shapiro and Peter H. Hassrick. Frederic Remington: The Masterworks. Ex. cat. St. Louis Art Museum, 1988.

founder Henry Bonnard Bronze Company
American, born c. 1890

ON VIEW

The illustrator, painter, and sculptor Frederic Remington was one of the so-called Independent American artists who captured the disappearing Wild West during the late nineteenth century. A native of Canton, New York, Remington enrolled in 1878 at Yale University, where he took a drawing course taught by John Niemeyer (1839-1932). After his father's death, he left school and in 1881, at the age of eighteen, he went west. He roamed from Mexico to Canada, rode the wagon trains and cattle trails from Texas to Montana, prospected for gold in the Apache country of the Arizona Territory, and worked as a hired cowboy. He became the owner of a small ranch in Kansas and part owner of a cowboy saloon in Kansas City.

He returned east in 1885, broke but determined to become an artist. In New York City, he enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied with the painter J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) in 1886. The following year, his first sketches were published in Harper's Weekly and Outing. Remington quickly became one of the most popular and highly paid illustrators. His Pitching Bronco for Harper's Weekly, which appeared in 1892, would serve as the preliminary sketch for his first piece of sculpture, The Bronco Buster.

Following a lull in the reception of his paintings in 1892, Remington began to look for another medium. Watching the sculptor Frederic W. Ruckstull (1853-1942) modeling his equestrian sculpture of Major General John F. Hartrauft in 1894, Remington was encouraged to begin modeling. He started work on The Bronco Buster, and by January 1895 Remington wrote his friend the writer Owen Wister, "my watercolors will fade-but I am to endure in bronze-even rust does not touch-I am modeling-I find I do well-I am doing a cowboy on a bucking bronco" (FR to Owen Wister, 1895, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). By the end of March he could crow to his Yale College classmate Poultney Bigelow, "It's the biggest business I ever did and if some of these rich sinners over here will cough up and buy a couple of dozen I will go into the 'mud business'" (FR to Poultney Bigelow, 1895, Poultney Bigelow Collection of Remington Letters, Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY).

The Henry-Bonnard Company reproduced The Bronco Buster, as Remington copyrighted it on October 15, 1895: "Equestrian Statue of Cowboy mounted upon and Breaking in Wild horse standing on hind feet. Cowboy holding onto horse's mane with left hand while right hand is extended upwards.

The bronze was exhibited in the windows of Tiffany and Co., on West 16th Street in Union Square, New York City. The bronzes were sold for $250 each. Harper's Weekly published an illustration of the sculpture in its October 19, 1895, issue. The art critic Arthur Hoeber wrote in the text that accompanied the illustration: "Breaking away from the narrow limits and restraints of pen and ink on flat surface, Remington has stampeded, as it were, to the greater possibilities of plastic form in clay" (Harper's Weekly, October 19, 1985, p. 993). Century Magazine followed with four views of the sculpture. The foundry issued a circular on the piece with an endorsement by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (q.v.). During the next several years, more than forty-five castings of The Bronco Buster were sold. Before 1900, seventy sand-cast bronzes were made by Henry-Bonnard. The figure and base were cast separately with the reins, stirrups, whip, and other details added in the process of finishing and chasing. The Currier cast was made in the very first years of the production.

During the next three years, Remington would complete other bronzes on the western theme: The Wounded Bunkie (1896), The Wicked Pony (1898), and The Scalp (1898). After 1900, Remington turned his production over to the newly formed Roman Bronze Company in Greenpoint, New York. Roman Bronze carried out "lost wax" castings of The Bronco Buster; some 305 casts were done in the twenty-three-and-a-half-inch size and approximately twenty-two in a larger thirty-two-inch size, which Remington modeled in 1909.

During his lifetime, Remington completed over twenty separate sculptures, but the most popular of all was The Bronco Buster. Indeed, The Bronco Buster became the most popular American bronze statuette of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The "Rough Riders" presented then Colonel Theodore Roosevelt with a bronze cast of the piece when they were mustered out in 1898.

JHD

REFERENCES

Beatrice G. Proske. Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture. Murrells Inlet, SC: Brookgreen Gardens, 1943.

Michael E. Shapiro. Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington. Ex. cat. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1981.

Peggy and Harold Samuels. Frederic Remington: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.

Michael E. Shapiro and Peter H. Hassrick. Frederic Remington: The Masterworks. Ex. cat. St. Louis Art Museum, 1988.


Exhibition
1972 Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, "Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts from the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire." May 14 - June 20.

1973 Louise E. Thorne Memorial Art Gallery, Keene State College, Keene, NH, "Remington and His Contemporaries." April 15 - May 13.

1978 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Sculpture in the Realist Manner." Jan. 14 - Feb. 19.

1995-1997 "American Art from the Currier Gallery of Art." Organized by the Currier Gallery of Art and the American Federation of Arts. Traveled to: Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Dec. 3, 1995 - Jan. 28, 1996; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL, Mar. 15 - Apr. 7, 1996; Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA, Aug. 10 - Oct. 13, 1996; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN, Feb. 2 - Mar. 30, 1997; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, Apr. 25 - June 22, 1997; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, July 18 - Sept. 8, 1997, cat. no. 31.

Provenance
Florence Andrews Todd
Bequest to Currier Gallery of Art, 1937

Additional Images
Additional Image Detail - artist signature
Detail - artist signature


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