By the 1890s, the American cowboy had become a national folk hero. Frederic Remington’s paintings, sculptures, and illustrations combine the realism and romance of the cowboy and the West. In Aiding a Comrade, Remington has chosen a scene of high drama. One interpretation of this painting is that, while riding, a cowboy has fallen from this horse. His companions attempt to help him and prevent him from being trampled by their horses. The artist leaves the fate of the rider unclear. However, in knowing the painting’s original title, Past All Surgery, Remington incorporates an element of fatalism and indicates that the fallen cowboy, beyond all help, may be doomed to be killed by the pursuing Plains Indians.
Remington focuses on the group of men and horses in the foreground. The brown horses turn outward, framing the central figure, who is further accentuated by the cloud of white dust behind him. The artist’s attention to detail is apparent in the depiction of the men, their clothing, and their riding equipment. Remington creates a convincing illusion of deep space through perspective – he paints the Indians much smaller, with less detail, and with faded colors. Remington’s colors are natural and strong; small touches of blue, cream, tan, and yellow on the ground suggest the shimmer of the hot sunlight. The quick, short brushstrokes show the influence of French Impressionism, which emphasized color, shadow, and light. For additional information about Impressionism, see Gustave Caillebotte’s The Orange Trees.
Perhaps no other artist is as closely identified with the depiction of the American West as Frederic Remington. Born in upstate New York in 1861, the son of a newspaper editor and Civil War soldier, Remington was fascinated with the tales his father told of battles and soldierly camaraderie. He briefly studied art at Yale University and at the Art Students League in New York. In 1881, Remington took his first trip to the West. In the following year, he moved to Kansas where he bought and ran a sheep ranch.
In 1884 Remington returned to New York, where he began selling his sketches to publishers of illustrated magazines. He soon became a leading illustrator of Western subjects, and one of the most sought-after magazine illustrators in America. His reputation was such that when Theodore Roosevelt wrote a series of articles on ranching and hunting in the West, he chose Remington to illustrate them.
During the 1880s, Remington turned his attention from illustration to painting and sculpture. Aiding a Comrade is an excellent example of the work for which he is best known.
Sensing that there was a side of America that was still artistically unchartered. Frederic Remington traveled west many times to report for magazines, make sketches, and buy props, such as boots and hats, for his studio. He exhibited Aiding a Comrade with the American Art Association in New York in 1890. It was during this show that critics positioned him not only as an artist, but as a historian and ethnographer. The narrative quality of his work gained him a reputation as a pictorial recorder of the passing American West.
