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Hostiles Watching the Column

Alternate TitleThe Scout
Artist Frederic Remington (American, 1861 - 1909)
Dateca. 1896-1897
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 25 x 27 1/4 inches (63.5 x 69.22 cm)
Framed: 35 3/4 x 38 3/4 inches (90.81 x 98.43 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Newhouse Galleries
Object number32-12
SignedSigned lower right: Frederic Remington —
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • 218
Collections
DescriptionA Plains Indian mounted on horseback scans the horizon.Exhibition History
Winfield High School, Kans., October 19–November 14, 1936, no cat.

[“Exhibition in Conjunction with the Consumers Cooperative Association’s 30th Annual Meeting”], Municipal Auditorium, Kansas City, Mo., December 2–5, 1958, no cat.

Kansas Centennial Historical Art Exhibition, Mulvane Art Center, Washburn University, Topeka, Kans., January 29–March 28 1961, no. 37.

Missouri Cultural Exhibit, Missouri Pavilion, New York World’s Fair, March 12, 1964–November 10, 1965, no cat. (as The Scout).

Gallery Label
In Hostiles Watching the Column Frederic Remington offers a meditation on the impact of western settlement on American Indian life. In this view of two Plains scouts observing enemies, Remington's low viewpoint and relatively thick paint assert the protagonists' regal bearing and create palpable psychological tension. Such effects differ markedly from Remington's earlier American Indian subjects in which he painted stories of contemporary western life in complex arrangements. This shift can be attributed in part to the nobility of Indian resistance that the painter began to recognize in the 1890s, by which time most native peoples had been confined to reservations. Remington's coincident move away from linear storytelling was also part of a larger tendency in late-19th-century American art.
Provenance
(Newhouse Galleries, New York);

to NAMA, 1932.

Published References
Frederic Remington, Drawings (New York: R. H. Russell; London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1897), unpaginated.

Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, “Frederic Remington’s Wild West Comes East,” Boston Evening Transcript, August 4, 1923, Magazine sec., 1.

Merle Johnson Collection, Reproductions from the Work of Frederic Remington (New York: New York Public Library, 1930), 8:97.

“The Acquisitions,” Art Digest 8 (December 1, 1933), 28 (as The Scout).

“The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: Complete Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings,” Art News 32 (December 9, 1933), 28.

Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 138 (as The Scout).

“Liberal with Art,” Kansas City Star, January 1, 1936, 8 (as The Scout).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts: Founders and Benefactors (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1940), 25 (as The Scout).

The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 166 (as The Scout).

Helen L. Card Collection, Frederic Remington: Artist Historian of the Old West (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, c. 1944), 5: unpaginated.

Harold McCracken, Frederic Remington: Artist of the Old West (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1947), 145.

Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 257 (as The Scout).

Kansas Centennial Historical Art Exhibition, exh. cat. (Topeka, Kans.: Mulvane Art Center, Washburn University, 1961), unpaginated (as The Scout).

“Missouri Cultural Exhibit Features Missouri Artists and Missouri History at New York World’s Fair,” Missouri Historical Review 58 (July 1964), 481 (as The Scout).

Clide Hollmann, Five Artists of the Old West (New York: Hastings House, 1965), 91 (as The Scout).

Marta Jackson, ed., The Illustrations of Frederic Remington with a Commentary by Owen Wister (New York: Bounty Books, 1970), 177.

Henry C. Pitz, Frederic Remington: 173 Drawings and Illustrations (New York: Dover Publications, 1972), xi, no. 27.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 254 (as The Scout).

Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1031, 1039 (as The Scout).

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 114–15.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Large-Scale Projects (New York: Monacelli Press, 1994), 552.

Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings (Cody, Wyo.: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1996), 2:609, CD-ROM, no. 2179.  

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 456-59 (repro.), 2: 204-05 (repro.).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.


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