COURTESY KNOEDLER & CO.
THE LAST STAND. By Frederic Remington
“THE LAST STAND,” by Frederic Remington, a strong and stirring picture of a dramatic incident in army life, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
FREDERIC REMINGTON
Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course
Remington’s life was as full of vigor and action as his pictures. Outdoor life and athletic sports were always a hobby of his. When he was at Yale he was on Walter Camp’s original football team, when Camp was practically inventing the American game, and Remington assisted him.
Frederic Remington was born at Canton, a little village in St. Lawrence County, New York State, in 1861. His father, a newspaper man, wanted to train him to follow the same profession; but Remington’s taste for dabbing at art was too strong. In the Yale Art School he picked up a little about art and a great deal about football. He could not accommodate himself to college routine; so he tried life for awhile as confidential clerk for Governor Cornell at Albany. This job was too quiet for him; so he threw it up and went out to Montana to “punch cows.” Remington became a downright, genuine cowboy, and his four years in the saddle brought him the accurate, minute knowledge of horses, Indians, cattle, and life on the plains that marks his work.