2014 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 227
In The Frederic Remington Book, Harold McCracken wrote, “Frederic Remington entered the field of sculpture as another means of perpetuating the American West. The image of the old-time cowboy and Indian of the Plains will live longer because of his effort and ability. Self-taught in modeling clay as he had been in drawing and painting, his first attempt resulted in The Broncho Buster. ‘I always had a feeling for mud,’ he facetiously explained, ‘and I did that . . . I wanted to do something a burglar wouldn’t have, moths eat, or time blacken.’ That first attempt at sculpture was acclaimed an outstanding success. Today it is the best known work of its kind by any American artist.”
PROVENANCE:
Col. R. L. Harrison, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1940s
Private Collection, by descent
LITERATURE:
H. McCracken, Frederic Remington: Artist of the Old West (New York, New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1947), plate 41, example illustrated
Harold McCracken, The Frederic Remington Book (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), page 255, example illustrated
Peter Hassrick, Frederic Remington: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture in the Amon Carter Museum and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Collections (New York, New York: 1973), pages 180-81, example illustrated
M.E. Shapiro, Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington (Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), pages 63-69, example illustrated
Michael Edward Shapiro and Peter H. Hassrick, Frederic Remington, The Masterworks (Cody, Wyoming: The Saint Louis Art Museum in conjunction with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1988), pages 172-5, 233, back cover, example illustrated
J. Ballinger, Frederic Remington (New York, New York: 1989), p. 74, example illustrated
Michael D. Greenbaum, Icons of the West, Frederic Remington’s Sculpture (Ogdensburg, New York: Frederic Remington Art Museum, 1996), front cover, pages 29, 47, 51-64, example illustrated