The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 608
673 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
the Museum of Fine Arts. It has now been newly installed in the beautiful Aud-
rey Jones Beck Building that opened in March 2ooo.
The reinstallation provided the opportunity for a thorough evaluation of the
collection, from both a scholarly and curatorial perspective. In addition to her
essay on Hogg, Neff has also written extensive curatorial essays on each of the
paintings. Of particular interest are her essays on Bronco Buster (1895), The Mier
Expedition: The Drawing of the Black Bean (Prisoners Drawing Their Beans) (1896),
Fzght for the Water Hole (An Arizona Water Hole; A Water-Hole in the Arizona Desert
(1893), and The Emigrants (1904), for they are among the best works in the col-
lection and all tell stories related to the settling of the West-indeed, Remington
might have been inspired to undertake The Mier Expedizton as a result of his talk
with the old Ranger and newspaperman John Salmon (Rip) Ford, during a trip
to San Antonio in 1896. The old veteran of the Mexican War, the Civil War, and
the Indian wars could "tell you stories that will make your eyes hang out on your
shirt front," Remington later wrote (p. 64). Wynne H. Phelan, the museum's
longtime conservator, supplements Neff's observations with an essay on Rem-
ington's technique.
The assembly of Remington's late work is one of the strengths of the Hogg
collection-The Fight for the Water Hole, Change of Ownershzp (The Stampede; Horse
Thieves), The Parley, and A New Year on the Cimarron (A Courier's Halt to Feed) were
all done in 1903; The Emigrants was done in 1904, The Herd Boy in 1905, The Call
for Help (At Bay) in 1908, and The Episode of the Buffalo Gun (The Visitation of the
Buffalo Gun; The Mystery of the Buffalo Gun; A Buffalo Stampede) in 1909-because
it is generally considered his most mature, the work that most closely symbolizes
his own vision of the West. By the turn of the century, Remington realized, as
William H. Goetzmann has pointed out in The West of the Imaginatzon (N.Y: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1986), that it was the West of the mind that kept the myth alive.
"Shall never come west again," he wrote his wife in 1900. "It is all brick build-
ings-derby hats and blue overhauls-it spoils my early illusions-and they are
my capital." (Frederick Remington to Eva Remington, No. 6, 1900, in Allen P.
Splete and Marilyn D. Splete, Frederick Remington--Selected Letters [N.Y.: Abbeville
Press, 1988], 318). As long as Remington could maintain those first impressions,
his early illusions, he produced paintings and sculpture that captured the hearts
of comtemporaries like Theodore Roosevelt.
Those illusions were especially meaningful to successful businessmen like Will
Hogg, Amon Carter, and Sid Richardson, men who identified their humble
rural beginnings with Remington's illusions and lived long enough to credit
those values-and those vanished times-with much of their success. Men like
Hogg and Carter were convinced that viewers today can learn valuable lessons
from these paintings, and, if recent art auctions and sales are any indication, the
new collectors of the "dot-com" generation may be viewing their own origins
through the same Remington-colored glasses.
Both publications are exemplary products of the maturing public and scholar-
ly acumen at the museums that feature art of the American West.608
April
Texas State Hstorical Association
Ron Tyler
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001, periodical, 2001; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101221/m1/686/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.