2024 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 194
The Scouts is included in the Frederic Remington Catalogue Raisonné as number 2449.
American art historian Matthew Baigell wrote, “One of Remington’s most remarkable traits can be seen most easily in his battle scenes – his distinct unwillingness to show direct confrontations between opposing forces. He usually focused on attackers or on defenders, but rarely on the battle joined. Quite often he omitted one or the other group of adversaries so that viewers could concentrate on the attack or on the defense. In this way we can enter more easily into the spirit of the picture. If we are on the winning side, we are not encumbered by having to face down a particular enemy. We win, and we win clean. If we are among the defenders, we do not always know how badly we are outnumbered or how helpless is our position. Rescue, perhaps victory, becomes possible. Since we do not see the resolution – nor can we always determine it from the information Remington provided – we can invent any resolution our imaginations dictate.”
PROVENANCE
The artist
Private collection, New Rochelle, New York
J. N. Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York
Texas Art Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1985
Red McCombs Collection, San Antonio, Texas
LITERATURE
Harper’s Weekly, October 14, 1899, p. 1033, illustrated