"Nocturnal Masterpieces"
By Jose Reyes 10/26/03
I am dedicating this page to Frederic Remington, my favorite American painter. I will provide the readers with a brief autobiography and then I will show you some paintings this forgotten artist produced in his short life. I will concentrate more on his nocturnal paintings because those are the ones that amaze me the most. When I first gazed at his paintings, I was overwhelmed by his detail and how realistic his art was. I started to dig into his work and realized how talented he was. The action portrayed in his paintings reflect how difficult life was and how surviving was top priority in frontier life, for the U.S. Calvary as it was for the original Americans, the Indians. These masterpieces gave us an unprecedented first hand view of history. They also showed the emotional aspects behind the post Civil War era, and in a more subjective matter. His work in Cuba also offered a correct depiction of the historical battles that took place and eventually freed the Cuban people from Spanish rule.
Brief Autobiography:
He was
born in Canton, N.Y. on 1861. His father was a Civil War 
hero
and and his mother was from a prominent rich family. Since his father was a
military man, he developed an admiration to military life and for that reason he
entered a secondary military academy in Massachusetts. In Highland
Military Academy he realized that art was his passion. He learned art in Yale
School of Art but left before graduating. That's where he took to the American
frontier and proceeded to paint the most incredible works of art that the world
has ever seen. He produced excellent
sculptures
also. Remington's style and attitude towards expressing action in his work was
remarkable. Since he was a realist then his paintings seemed to look exactly
like a photograph but what really was amazing about his work, to me, was how he
captured the nocturnal scenes of frontier life. He was very fond of horses and
was considered the best authority in painting the beautiful animal. I will show
some of his famous daytime paintings, but I will concentrate on the nocturnal
paintings more. He spent some time in Cuba as a war correspondent for Harper's
Weekly in 1898. Remington was 48 when he past away from an appendectomy in 1909.
Daytime Pictures and Nocturnal Pictures: Slideshow
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