100 Years of Illustration

Mike Ward's Magazineart.org

I'm interrupting this Remington thread to introduce you all to magazineart.org, a great web log created by Michael Ward, who emailed me last week with some kind words about this blog.

It's only fair that I acknowledge his altruistic efforts as well. He has a ton of great material with hundreds of interesting links. The two illustrations below are just a couple of examples of the images he has uploaded for your study and enjoyment.

As they say, enjoy! By all means.

Click on images to enlarge.

That looks like Edward Penfield's chop in this cover.

Remington: with the Buffalo Soldiers, 1889 - 2

Remington described this illustration, "A Study of Action," in this way: "We would downward among the masses of rock for some time, when we suddenly found ourselves on a shelf of rock. We sought to avoid it by going up and around, but after a tiresome march we were still confronted by a drop of about a hundred feet. I gave up in despair; but the lieutenant, after gazing at the unknown depths which were masked at the bottom by a thick growth of brush, said, 'This is a good place to go down.' I agreed that it was once you got started; but personally I did not care to take the tumble. [Don't forget that Remington was 5 ft. 9 inches in height and weighed 300 lbs.]

"Taking his horse by the bits, the young officer began the descent. The slope was at an angle of at least sixty degrees, and was covered with loose dirt and bowlders [sic], with the mask of brush at the bottom concealing awful possibilities of what might be beneath. The horse hesitated a moment, then put his head down and his leg forward and started. The loose earth crumbled, a great stone was precipitated to the bottom with a crash, the horse slid and floundered along. Had the situation not been so serious it would have been funny, because the angle of the incline was so great that the horse actually sat on his haunches like a dog."

Click on images to enlarge them.

Detail of the above illustration. This is one of the black enlisted men. The officers were all white.

"Marching in the Desert." Great drawing, but a very static composition.

Detail of the above illustration, showing Remington's great skill and craftsmanship. Though drawn with help from a photograph it is nevertheless an excellent portrait of horse and rider.

"The Sign Language." I think that these vignettes are much better than the more elaborate illustrations.
Remington described his encounter with the San Carlos Apaches: "Great excitment prevailed when it was discovered that I was using a sketch-book, and I was forced to disclose the half-finished visage of one villanous face to their gaze. It was straightway torn up, and I was requested, with many scowls and grunts, to discontinue that pastime for Apaches more than any other Indians dislike to have portraits made. That night the 'hi-ya-ya-hi-ya-hi-yo-o-o-o-o' and the beating of the tom-toms came from all parts of the hills, and we sank to sleep with this grewsome [sic] lullaby."

Detail, showing Remington's excellent character drawing and extremely competent pen-and-ink technique.

"A Pull at the Canteen." Too dependent upon photography to be interesting except for the splendid technique.

Detail of the above illustration.

Remington: A Scout with the Buffalo Soldiers, 1889

This is Part One of a two-part series of Frederic Remington's illustration for the piece he wrote and illustrated for the Century magazine issue of April 1889. The drawings owe much to the photos from which they surely much have originated, but Remington had a great interest in detail as well as a canny sense of composition.

His choices of images are superb, as this enlarged detail of a cavalry noncom striking a pose for the photographer. I sense a certain disdain, but maybe it's because I know of Remington's racial prejudices. The entire scene is reproduced below, entitled: A Camping Sketch.

The article began on a page it shared with the conclusion of a serious political piece by renown explorer George Kennan. Click on this image and others following to enlarge them.

Detail from Remington's pen-and-ink rendering of a GI saddle of the time.

"A Packer and Mules." A lieutenant with the 10th Dragoons had invited Remington to go along on a two-week scouting trip in Arizona. "Will you go down to stable-call and pick out a mount?" asked the lieutenant. "You are one of the heavies, but I think we can outfit you. . . ." Remington was said to weigh 300 lbs, but stood only 5 feet nine inches tall. Needless to say, he would not have made it as an embedded journalist today without losing much of that weight.

"A Halt to Tighten the Packs." Mule skinners and troopers adjust the loads the mules must bear over the rugged terrain.

Close up of a trooper of the U.S. 10th Cavalry. Image will not enlarge.

"Trooper in Tow." This is already enlarged from a small spot wrapped around by text and shows a practical way and comic aside to enduring the march. Remington wrote, "The slopes of the Sierra Bonitas are very steep, and as the air became more rarified as we toiled upward I found that I was panting for breath. My horse -- a veteran mountaineer -- grunted in his efforts and drew his breath in long and labored blowing; consequently I felt as though I was not doing anything unusual in puffing and blowing myself." Image will not enlarge more than this.

"Marching on the Mountains." I don't quite understand this picture caption. It doesn't look like marching to me. I would say it was more like gingerly descending a mountain trail. Click on image to enlarge it.

Detail from the illustration above. Click on image to enlarge it.

"A Camping Sketch." Remington wrote, "Officers have often confessed to me that when they are on long and monotonous field service and are troubled with a depression of spirits, they have only to go about the campfires of the negro soldier in order to be amused and cheered by the clever absurdities of the men. Personal relations can be much closer between white officers and colored soldiers than in white regiments without breaking the barriers which are necessary to army discipline." He goes on to admit that black troopers behaved with bravery and valor in fighting Cheyennes and Apaches, but ends the paragraph with: "These episodes prove the sometimes doubted self-reliance of the negro."

To which I would offer the illustration with which we began this posting.

A Remington Folio of Western Types, 1902

Portrait photo courtesy of the National Gallery.

He's not my favorite person. Far from it: he seems to me to have been a pompous racist without a good word for anyone, and in his career as an embedded illustrator for an army trained to decimate Indian tribes of their men, women, and children, he acted as a sycophant and cheerleader.

Author David McCullough quotes from a letter of Remignton's to a friend in Frederic Remington, The Masterworks, published by Abrams in 1988: " 'I've got some Winchesters . . . and when the massacring bgins which you speak of, I can get my share of 'em and what's more I will. Jews-injuns-Chinamen-Italians-Huns, the rubbish of the earth I hate.'

"He longed for a 'real blood letting,' a war. . . ."

McCullough concludes the paragraph with "The only combat he had ever experienced firsthand was on the Yale football field."

Born on 1 October 1861 in upstate New York, close to the border of Canada to an upper middle-class family and a Civil War hero father, he succumbed to peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix on the day after Christmas, 1909, in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at the age of 48.

The folio below appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for October 1902. The text is his as well as the illustrations. Click on the images to enlarge them.

"The Cow-Boy. No longer strange, and becoming conventional, the cow-boy is merely trying to get mountain-bred ponies to go where he wants them to go. Knowing the 'Irish Pig' of their nature, he has to be fast and insistent; all of which represents a type of riding and pony 'footing' easier to deliniate than to perform."

"The Cossack Post (cavalryman). A picket of three men is technically called a 'cossack post,' and the moonlight of the picture uncovers a United States cavalryman on the Northern Plains in the almost fierce and certainly definite light of a country which has 'no atmosphere,' as painters phrase it. The cap and overcoat were issued for winter campaigns in the sullen cold."

"The Scout. Too well known to need particular comment. He was the white hunter who had gone to the wild countries and was employed by our troops for light-horse work in a country and a people unknown to the army."

"The Half-Breed. One of the relics of the old fur company days -- the descendant of white employees and Indian squaws. In great numbers the half-breeds led a nomad existence on the plains of the Northwest, and at one time bid fair to become a separate and peculiar people. Our government through the Army deported large bands from the then territory of Montana to Canada, and their expiring effort was the Louis Riel Rebellion. The passing of the buffalo left them stranded, and their predatory habits made their suppression necessary; but they still exist, though robbed of their picturesque apparel and characteristic traits."

For a wonderful slide show of Remington's night paintings, The Color of Night,
click on this link to The National Gallery's website.

Next: Frederic Remington, A Scout with the Buffalo-Soldiers, and more.