By Sharon Jeffus
Two of the greatest horse artists who ever lived are Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.
Frederic Remington
Although Frederic Remington was born in the East, he pictured the Old West better than any native westerner. It was his passion. According to Three Hundred Years of American Painting by Alexander Elliot, he wrote, "I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever, and the more I considered the subject, the bigger the forever loomed ... I began to try to record some facts around me, and the more I looked, the more the panorama unfolded." Remington was born in Canton, New York, in 1861. By the time his family moved to Ogdensburg eleven years later, he'd already made pictures of imaginary frontier battle scenes, and his first painting, in 1875, was of a captive Gaul, done on a window shade. If you didn't have good materials to paint on around the house, what are some of the things available to use? Would you consider a window shade?
When his father died, he decided to quit school and head west to seek his fortune. He became a cowboy and a ranch cook. In 1886, he established himself as an illustrator of western themes, and sold his work to many of the major magazines of that time including Harper's Weekly. While most of his best-known work was in illustration, he was also a fine painter, capturing on his canvases the sweeping western scenes, cowboy and Indian figures, and moments of danger and conflict that are the romance of the West. Whether portraying a Crow brave racing death at the hands of his enemies in Ridden Down or cowboys eluding Indian pursuers in a Dash for the Timber, Remington returned time and again to his signature theme: the life and death struggle of the individual against overwhelming forces in the west.
The West was the perfect place for Remington; he was an outdoorsman at heart, just like his dear friend Teddy Roosevelt. Remington painted "men with the bark on," to use his own rugged phrase, and their horses. Cowboys, prospectors, soldiers, Indians … Remington's gift was a strongly journalistic and illustrative one, coupled easily with his gift for words. "These [his pictures] showed themes of the real rodeo," Bigelow later wrote, "parched in alkali dust, blinking out from barely opened eyelids under the furious rays of an Arizona sun." The old man's West might be gone; but Remington's cowboys and soldiers were there. According to the book, Great Masterpieces by Louis Chapin, "Remington's success in every medium rested on his sure dramatic instincts and on his sense of the scene - the whole lively interest of an event that depended neither on well-known people nor on an allegorical message for its effect, but simply on an emphatic interaction or (in the case of a single figure) a well-bitten characterization." Might it not be possible, after three-quarters of a century, to bring these two roles together as one achievement, to enjoy the cross-pollination between realistic reportage and creative vision? With all Remington's perseverance this was difficult for him, and critics today still seem to find the job bothersome. In the first place, it's a nuisance when an artist spills from one classification to another. We prefer people whom we can sort out and label; painter, sculptor, impressionist, hard-edge realist or whatever. Please, not all four in one man! Run him through the sort again ... "It may turn out, in the longer view, that Frederic Remington was an educable journalist who was also - and sometimes in the same inseparable act - a master artist."
In the mid-1890s, Remington became one of the finest sculptors of all time. In bronzes such as "The Bronco Buster," he gave a new dimension to his subject, charging the rider with such detail, movement and energy he seems to be alive. Sculpture is three-dimensional art. It is art that you can walk around. Look at this lesson on how to sculpt a horse head.
Hands-on Lesson 1
Start with your clay in a long potato shape. Bend it in half. It will look like a cashew nut. When sculpting, it is important to keep the object rotating in your hands. You want to be working on all sides at once. You don't want to stay working on one side. If you did, you might get finished and one side looks like a horse and the other a hubcap! Make your clay into the basic shape below and then set it on a flat surface so you can be sure that it will stand alone when you are finished.
What I like to do is to take the basic horse head shape and hold it in the position I want it in when it is finished. (I may want the nose up or turned downward.) Then I take it and gently slap it down on a flat surface. This forms the base of the horse's neck into a base.
Here (see picture in magazine), the nostril hole is being located. It is not directly in front, but to the side of the horse's head.
Here (see picture in magazine), I pinch the back of the horse's neck to start forming the mane. If you are using pottery clay and the clay starts cracking, just add a little water to the clay by wetting your hands. A little water goes a long way. Too much water and the clay will really stick to your hands.
In the picture below (see picture in magazine), you can see the use of a pencil to create the nose and mouth. The pencil is shoved in deep and then pulled towards the side to make a crease in the skin. When doing the mouth, I draw a line across the front of the head below the nostril. I do this in order to keep the mouth straight. I continue the line past the nostril and then press it in deep and pull to the side to create the folds around the edge of the mouth.
Here (see picture in magazine), I am placing the eyes. It is not a good idea to do it this way if you are going to fire it in a kiln. It is a good method to make sure the eyes are directly across from each other. Nobody wants a cockeyed horse. This is an easy way. It does, however, tend to leave air bubbles in the clay behind the finished eye, and it if is fired, it could explode. If you are going to air dry or are using oil-based clay that you do not fire, this is a good way. Also, sculpey clay is baked, not fired. It remains soft, like a chocolate cookie, until it cools from the oven. Because it is soft, any trapped air doesn't seem to bother it.
This is an example of an eye (see picture in magazine). It is made by first pushing a hole in the clay that forms an eye socket. Next you make an eyeball that fits into the socket. I then take two separate pieces of clay shaped like a short, fat worm and place one above the eyeball and one below. I then press the clay together to eliminate any lines.
In this figure (see picture in magazine), the eyeball has been placed into its socket. The two eyelids will come later.
This horse's ear is made by making a small carrot-shaped piece of clay and sticking your fingernail into it to form the inside of the ear. I put the ear on the top of the head, and make sure it is well-attached.
Our finished horse will look something like this one (see picture in magazine). The good thing about clay is that if you don't like your finished product, just smash it and start again. Pottery clay can air dry. It can be painted with acrylic paint or coated with some kind of varnish or clear acrylic coat. Just painting it with white craft glue works wonderfully and makes a good finish. If the clay is never fired, you can make it workable again by simply putting the clay into a plastic bag and adding a little water. Your finished horse head will be quite durable. I wouldn't recommend using it for a doorstop or a hockey puck, but if you put it on a shelf, it will last for years!
Concepts to Learn
- panorama
- sculpture
- illustrator
- studio
- diagonal lines
- shading
- shadow
- texture
- implied texture
- mural
- atmospheric perspective
- background
- center of interest
Remington briefly interrupted his work with Western themes in 1898, when he went to Cuba s a war correspondent and illustrator during the Spanish Civil War. He was deeply disillusioned by the realities of war, finding it not heroic, but appalling.
In 1898, publisher William Randolph Hurst sent Remington to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War as an artist/correspondent. The story is that when Remington complained there wasn't any war, Hurst cabled him, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." From this journey Remington painted his famous picture, Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.
Remington was quite a rotund man weighing in at over 300 pounds towards the end of his life. It was a sad moment for him when he could no longer sit on a horse. He had ridden every day of his adult life so his studio had barn doors so the horses could come right in. He pictured each horse as unique. His fast eyes could see that a horse could have all its feet off of the ground while galloping and painted his horses this way. People scoffed at him, until through photography and the stop motion camera they found hit to be right.
With his dynamic representations of cowboys and cavalrymen, bronco busters and braves, 19th-century artist Frederic Remington created a mythic image of the American West that continues to inspire America today. His technical ability to reproduce the physical beauty of the Western landscape made him a sought-after illustrator, but it was his insight into the heroic nature of American settlers that made him great. This painter, sculptor, author and illustrator, who was so often identified with the American West, surprisingly spent most of his life in the East. More than anything, in fact, it was Remington's connection with the eastern fantasy of the West, and not a true knowledge of its history and people, to which his admirers responded.
For a delightful website, where you can view history as it was pictured and written in Harper's Weekly, go to www.harpweek.com.
Books on Frederic Remington
- The Frederic Remington Art Museum Collection by Brian Dippie
- Frederic Remington: Masterpieces from the Amon Carter Museum by Rick Stewart
- Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings by Peter H. Hassrick
- Remington: The Years of Critical Aclaim by Kellie
Charles Russell
Charles Russell was the other of the two greatest and most popular painters of the American West. A stalwart individualist, Russell first earned his living as a trapper and cowboy, later translating his passion for adventure and American wildlife onto canvas for his own amusement. Russell's works are filled with the movement of cowboys, Native Americans (with whom he lived for a time), and galloping horses. There is a story that when he was young, he once followed a man with a trained bear far away from his home. When his parents finally found him and brought him home, he took the mud from the bottom of his shoes and molded a little bear of his own. It is said that he always carried a lump of clay or beeswax with him so that when he saw something interesting, he could make a quick mold of it so that he could paint it later. Is this something you would enjoy doing? He wanted to be a cowboy and go to the Wild West. He didn't do well in school, so in 1880, when he turned 16, his parents sent him to the Montana Territory with a family friend, Pike Miller.
He left everything and headed for Montana when he was only 16 years old. He was not only a trapper, but also lived for six months with the Blood Indians of Canada. He first started painting and drawing as a hobby, and found that his fellow westerners were happy to pay up to five silver dollars each for his pictures! According to Three Hundred Years of American Painting, we have his story told by Russell himself about being asked to do a painting. "I thought I'd hit him good and hard because none of the boys had any money. Grass hadn't even started on the ranges, and our saddles were to soak, so I said fifty dollars, and I'm a common liar if the fellow didn't dig out a hundred dollars and hand them over. He thought I meant fifty dollars apiece and I got crooked as a hind's leg right away.." When he married in 1896, his wife took over the business end of his artwork. Eventually, his pictures went for as much as $10,000 each. He painted a 26-foot mural in the Montana House of Representative about the Lewis and Clark expedition's meeting with the Flathead Indians.
Jake Hoover was a mountain man who befriended Russell and took him under his wing. Russell's description of Jake was, "He had no more fear of a bear than I would have of a milk cow." Hoover often shared his cabin with the young Charlie, sometimes providing food and shelter for months at a time. This friendship allowed Russell to experience the ways of the frontier life he would later portray so vividly in his paintings.
In 1882, Charlie landed a job as a wrangler on a cattle drive. He wrangled for eleven years, and while he was not known for being a good roper or rider, Russell established a local reputation as the friendly cowboy artist who loved to draw and tell a great story.
Prior to Russell's marriage to Nancy Cooper in 1896, only a few of his works had been reproduced nationally. Although he was unsure of his ability to earn a living with his art, Nancy Russell recognized her husband's talent and promise, and provided the business sense and drive that eventually made her unambitious husband one America's not popular artists. Success did not come easily for the Russells. At the very time Frederic Remington was getting out of illustration to concentrate on painting, Russell secured illustrating assignments and began to gain exposure through exhibitions and press coverage. His emergence in the big time art world came in 1911 with a one-man show at a New York gallery, followed three years later by an exhibition in London.
Charles Russell felt deeply the passing of the West, the most evident theme of his art. He said, "In my book, a pioneer is a man who comes to a virgin country, traps off all the fur, kills off all the wild meat, cuts down all the trees, grazes off all the grass, plows the roots up and strings ten million miles of bob wire. A pioneer destroys things and calls it civilization. I wish to God that this country was just like it was when I first saw it, and that none of you folks was here at all."
Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians
In 1911, the Montana State Legislature began looking for an artist to paint a large mural in the legislative chamber at the capitol building in Helena, Montana. The theme of the mural was to be something about Montana's history. Charles M. Russell submitted two drawings for the selection committee's consideration. One of his drawings depicted an Indian attack on a wagon train, and the other portrayed Lewis and Clark meeting the Shoshone Indians. Neither idea was accepted by the selection committee. The first drawing was rejected because its content was considered unsuitable, and the second was not chosen because the meeting with the Shoshones took place in what is now the state of Idaho, not Montana. Committee members liked Russell's style, so they suggested that he paint a mural about the chance meeting between the Corps of Discovery and the Salish (Flathead) Indians at Ross' Hole, a beautiful valley in western Montana. As Russell researched the meeting, he discovered that it took place on September 4-5, 1805. Russell read the journals, and it is known for certain that he visited Ross' hole and made numerous sketches of the natural setting there.
The party had not traveled far from the Shoshone encampment when they met a group of friendly Indians (no known as Salish or Flathead) at Ross; Hole. The Salish had never seen white people before and the expedition members had never before seen Indians who looked and spoke like the Salish - so each party was somewhat astonished by the other. The entire event was generally hospitable and pleasant and you can see that in the pictures. Russell evidently worked well under pressure because he completed the 26-foot mural in July of 1912, two months ahead of his deadline. Not only did he paint it quickly, he painted it well. This mural is considered by many art critics to be his finest work. It is still on display at the state capitol building in Helena, Montana.
In an artistic sense, you can see Russell's use of atmospheric perspective. Look at the mountains in the background. The ones closest to you are darker than the ones farther away. What is the center of interest in the picture? The center of interest is the group of Indians. Diagonal lines show action and movement in the picture.
Russell began painting as something of a visual journal of his own adventures in the land he so loved and wanted to preserve. His painting are filled with cowboys, Indians and wild horses. Much of his work portrayed the Native American Indian, with whom he lived for several years. By the time Russell had begun his art, much of the so-called "Wild West" was already history. And much of what was left was rapidly being destroyed. The artistic works of Charles M. Russell help keep the mythic American Wild West from ever dying completely by giving us lively panoramas of it. Charles Marion Russell was an accomplished painter, sculptor, illustrator, as well as a gifted storyteller who gave America an unparalleled visual history of the Old West.
The Independent newspaper first named him "The Cowboy Artist" and the name stuck with him for the rest of his life.
Russell was a very colorful storyteller; he published three books of short stories that he illustrated himself. These books are of the stories he and his friends would tell while sitting around someone's home in the evening or at a party. He was able to capture the old cowboy lifestyle in words as readily as in his paintings. Some of his stories were "The Story of the Cowpuncher," "Lepley's Bear," "Some Liars of the Old West" and "Jake Hoover's Pig." These stories were included in a book called Trails Plowed Under, which was published in 1937. In these stories, he used the character Rawhide Rawlins as the narrator/storyteller.
Hands-On Lesson 2
The artist's method of using lines and circles has several advantages. Have you ever started a picture and when you were halfway through, you realized that you should have started at a different place on your page? Have you ever wanted to draw a magnificent large horse that filled the whole page, but when you were finished, it was a little scrawny looking horse shape in the middle of a whole page? Well, the use of centerlines and circles will help you get more pictures looking more like you intended. It is easier to figure out how you want the legs, where the head is looking, and what the horse is doing by first starting out with a stick horse. The circles are useful to give the horse its bulk. As you draw the circles, you can make the horse as wide as you want. All of these techniques help you look at the general layout of the horse before going on to the details that make a horse.
Did you enjoy this article? You'll find each issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine packed with great articles to inform you, encourage you, and remind you that you're not alone. Plus, you can receive 19 free gifts when you subscribe. Subscribe today!
www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com |
|
|
|
|
