Frederic Remington

(American, 1861-1909)

The Buck Overtaken, circa 1888

oil on board

signed Remington (lower right)

15 x 15 inches

Literature:

Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, vol. I, Cody, Wyoming, 1996, p. 118, no. 229, illustrated

Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail, 1888, p. 141

Bears stamp reading "Property of The Century Co. / Union Square, New York", publishers of the above

President Theodore Roosevelt, the naturalist and conservationist, grew, perhaps not ironically, out of Theodore Roosevelt the hunter. Hunting brought Roosevelt close to nature, and to animals, game animals and others. His love of animals and respect for the natural world shines through his earliest writing on the subject, Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail. In a chapter entitled “The Ranchman’s Life on Crag and Prairie,” Roosevelt recounts the sport of deer hunting “by the aid of hounds,” and goes on to name and describe the two hounds at the ranch. “One is a rough-coated, pure-blood Scotch stag-hound named Rob. The other, Brandy, is a track-hound, bell-mouthed, lop-eared, keen-nosed, and not particularly fast, but stanch as Death himself.” The hounds’ business is to tire and run down the deer once the hunter has shot it. It is an old sport, as old as the kinship between man and dog, but it is not easy. As Roosevelt writes, “A doe or a flying buck is borne to the ground with a single wrench… but a buck at bay is a formidable opponent, and no dog can rush in full on the sharp prong points.” Remington’s rendering of the fateful moment when the hound gets behind the six-point buck’s antlers and pulls it down by the neck meets the viewer’s eye as a kind of plein air tableau in black and white, a scene as Roosevelt might have come upon it, riding in pursuit.

Born in Canton, New York into a military family with a long history, Frederic Remington loved to draw and got into Yale’s College of Art but left after three semesters. He bounced from job to job—wishing he were camping and fishing instead. Unsurprisingly, he failed to win the approbation of his fiancee’s father. Remington drifted west into Kansas Territory, where he succumbed to get-rich quick schemes that ranged from sheep to saloons. After many trials, he won the hand of his fiancee, Eva Caton. Despite his ordeals, Remington’s first western go-round produced one precious truth: caricatures and sketches could be worked up into artworks that would sell. He went back to New York, studied at the Art Students’ League, and soon began selling scenes of Western life to Harper’s and other periodicals that couldn’t print enough stories and scenes of the “Wild West.” The commission to illustrate Roosevelt’s Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail would open other doors and lead to an esteemed career as an easel painter, bronze sculptor, and author. Remington would go on to create some of the most indelible images of the American West.

- James D. Balestrieri

The Buck Overtaken, circa 1888