I recently bumped into this life-size statue of a Bronco Buster in Zion Utah and had never seen anything quite like it writes Polaris founder Ben Pinnington on LinkedIn.
I have since discovered it is the iconic creation of one of the finest artists of the American West Frederic Remington, and Bronco Busters feature in many museums, board rooms and the Oval Office, no less.
An artist of astonishing versatility Remington excelled at capturing the raw energy, passion and danger of the frontier in paintings and sculpture. The ‘Bronco Buster’ was his first bronze in 1895, and 21 others followed including ‘the Scalp’ ‘the Wounded Bunkie’ and ‘the Rattle Snake’- he had a gift for names.
President Teddy Roosevelt who shared his love of the outdoors became a friend and considered him the country’s greatest living painter. Remington’s work, although sketched in the West was mostly painted and sculpted at his studio in New Rochelle NY. He did much with Roosevelt to establish a heroic vision of the Wild West which persists today however selective or romanticised.
His painting ‘A Dash for Timber’ with flying horses and massed riders charging pell mell, guns blazing, has been called a masterpiece of all American art, let alone western art. But there was a commercial imperative too as Remington reportedly said: ‘cowboys sell.’ A man with a prodigious appetite for food, drink, stories and the good life Remington died in 1909 aged just 48 having created 3000 works of art.
