“Yes, but not all,” was the reminiscent reply.
“And those trophies?” I added, glancing at them.
“O, I bought most of them. That jacket I bought from a mounted policeman. Pretty, isn’t it? I am able to depict the western country and life, because I have been there.”
REMINGTON’S SCHOOLBOY EFFECTS.
“When did you first take up art?”
“I studied some art at the Yale Art School, and a little at the Art League. When I was a schoolboy, I was forever making sketches on the margin of my school-books, but I never really studied it much, although my dream was to be an artist. At nineteen, I caught the fever to go west, and incidentally to become rich. That was my idea; art came second. I ranched it, and got into Indian campaigns. I have always been fond of horses and out-of-door life, and I got plenty of it there, with every opportunity to study the rough life, the lay of the country, and the peculiar atmosphere.”
“Mr. Remington,” I asked, “how do you get that ‘devil-may-care’ look in the faces of your cowboys and soldiers?”
His face lighted up, and a deep twinkle came into his eyes. He glanced across the room at just such a picture as I had described. He took his pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the window sill.
REMINGTON’S ATTENTION TO DETAIL.
“Kipling says that, ‘a single man in a barrack is not a plaster saint,’ and that is about it. That cavalryman posed for me on his horse. But not all of my work is from life. I go west for three months every year, and gather a lot of sketches and then work them up. Those color sketches there,—a chief and his daughter,—are from life. You see I was able to get all the color. Yet I like to depict white men best; they are more interesting.”