Teaching a Mustang Pony to Pack Dead Game

Artist Frederic Remington (American, 1861 - 1909)

Dateca. 1890

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 20 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (51.44 x 76.84 cm)
Framed: 27 11/16 x 37 5/8 inches (70.33 x 95.57 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of the Union Pacific Foundation

Object numberF86-19

SignedSigned lower right: — remington

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionA scene painted "en grisaille" of three cowboys on a plain, teaching a pony to carry a dead animal. The cowboy on the left, who leans toward the lower left corner of the painting, has lassoed the struggling pony about its neck. The cowboy standing in the upper right of the picture has roped the pony around its legs. The cowboy between the two is in the process of throwing a dead deer on the horse's back. Two other horses stand at the roped horse's left. Mountains appear on the distant horizon.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

Growing up in upstate New York, Frederic Remington became entranced by the American West, a place he imagined filled with cowboys, Indians and adventure. Following a trip in 1881 into the Montana Territory, he temporarily adopted the life of a cowboy and began making art that reinforced nostalgic fantasies about the frontier West, which was declared exhausted by the 1890 census.

Teaching a Mustang Pony to Pack Dead Game focuses on cowboys attempting to force a pony to overcome its innate fear of a dead antelope. Remington painted the dynamic black-and-white composition to be an engraved illustration in the August 16, 1890, issue of Harper's Weekly.

Provenance

(Anderson Auction Company, New York, 20 May 1908, lot 35 [as "Training the Mustang"]);

Mr. Eakin; to (Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 3–4 February 1956, lot 269 [as "The Training Period"]);

to (Emmanuel Jay Rousuck, New York);

William Cannon Eppler, New York;

to family of William Cannon Eppler, by descent;

to (Purnell Gallery, Baltimore);

to (Ira Spanierman Gallery, New York, 1985);

to NAMA, 1986.

Published References

“Teaching a Pony to Pack Game,” Harper’s Weekly 34 (August 16, 1890), 632, 634.

Anderson Auction Company, New York, May 20, 1908, lot 35 (as Training the Mustang).

E. Douglas Allen, “Frederic Remington—Author and Illustrator: A List of His Contributions to American Periodicals,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 49 (December 1945), 906.

Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, February 3–4, 1956, lot 269 (as The Training Period).

Henry Adams, “Remington Painting Added to Collection,” Calendar of Events (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), February 1987, 1–2.

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 5, 113–14.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6^th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 239 (as Teaching a Mustang Pony to Pack Game).

Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings (Cody, Wyo.: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1996), 1:332, CD-ROM, no. 1061.

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: 452 – 455, 2: 204.

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