Born in Canton, New York, in 1861 Remington briefly attended the Yale School of Art and the Art Students League of New York before heeding the call to “Go West.” As a young man, he traveled widely throughout the country, spending most of his time sketching the people and places in the new American frontier. In 1886 he established himself as an illustrator of Western themes, and sold his work to many of the major magazines of the time including, HARPER’S WEEKLY. While most of his best known work was in illustration, he was also a fine painter, capturing on his canvases the sweeping vistas, heroic figures, and moments of danger and conflict that came to define the archetypal romance of the West. Whether portraying a Crow brave facing death at the hands of his enemies in “Ridden Down” or cowboys eluding Indian pursuers in “A Dash for the Timber,” Remington returned time and again to his signature theme: the life and death struggles of the individual against overwhelming forces.

In the mid-1890s, Remington turned his talent to sculpture and quickly mastered the medium. In bronzes such as “The Bronco Buster” and “The Cheyenne,” he gave a new dimension to his subjects, charging them with such detail, movement, and energy they seemed ready to leap to life. Remington briefly interrupted his work with Western themes in 1898 when he went to Cuba as a war correspondent and illustrator during the Spanish Civil War. He was deeply disillusioned by the realities of war, finding it not heroic, but appalling. Retiring to an island retreat on the St. Lawrence River, he continued to perfect his craft, creating much of his most famous work. In 1908, Remington made his last trip West, and died soon after of appendicitis at the age of forty-eight.

Over the course of his career, Frederic Remington produced more than three thousand drawings and paintings, twenty-two bronze sculptures, a novel, a Broadway play, and over one hundred articles and stories. With its dramatic subjects and striking realism, Remington’s artwork fired the American imagination, and his vision of the West was adopted by the nation. As the end of the 19th century brought the closing of the frontier, Remington immortalized the Western experience as one of independence, individualism, and stoic heroism. It was this optimistic vision that had encouraged the settling of the West, and was, during Remington’s time, the way Americans wanted to see themselves. He struck a mythic chord in defining our national character that still echoes today in popular culture. From the “Marlboro Man” in the cigarette advertisements to the epic Westerns of John Ford (whose film SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON was directly inspired by Remington’s work), images we continue to perceive as uniquely American reflect the enduring legacy of Frederic Remington.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1848. The son of a shoemaker, Saint-Gaudens moved with his family to New York before he was one. Growing up in the city, he became interested in art, and after turning thirteen he left school to apprentice with a cameo cutter. While an apprentice, Saint-Gaudens took classes at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. When he was nineteen he moved to Europe, where he continued his studies in both Paris and Rome. Studying classical art and architecture, Saint-Gaudens began to work as a professional sculptor.

Returning to America, Saint-Gaudens received his first major commission in New York City. Still considered one of his important works, “Admiral Farragut” (1881) stands in New York’s Madison Square Park. Combining the technical proficiency learned in Europe with a free and flowing hand, Saint-Gaudens created bronze statues that represented the complexity and grandeur of the American heroes he portrayed. Saint-Gaudens was a master of the human form, perfectly representing the physical while bringing to life the personality of his subjects.

By the late 1880s and 1890s, Saint-Gaudens had produced some of his greatest work including a copper statue of Diana and the first of his bronze monuments to President Abraham Lincoln. He had also become part of a group of rising artists and architects including H.H. Richardson, Stanford White, Charles McKim and John La Farge. Working with the McKim, Mead, and White architectural firm he produced a significant body of monuments and decorative sculpture. Throughout his career, he would continue to work closely with architects, creating most of his work specifically for the sites.

Throughout the 1890s Saint-Gaudens continued to work while engaging in the greater art world through teaching and advocacy. Often taking on many private students at once, Saint-Gaudens also taught at the Art Students League of New York, and worked in support of the American Academy in Rome. During these busy times, however, Saint-Gaudens continued to work diligently on a number of projects, many of which took him upwards of ten years or more to complete. His bronze statue of General Sherman led by Victory, which stands at the entrance to New York’s Central Park took eleven years. Probably the most famous of this time however, was the sculpture of a bent and draped figure deep in thought and grief in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C. This sculpture uniquely brings together the monumental and the personal for which Saint-Gaudens’ work has become known.

By 1900, Saint-Gaudens moved to his summer home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Joined by other artists including Maxfield Perish, Thomas Dewing, and his brother, the sculptor Louis, Saint-Gaudens created a community of artists there that supported and inspired him throughout his final years. On August 3, 1907, Saint-Gaudens died. Today, nearly one hundred years later, the technical grace and subtle beauty of his work remains an inspiration to artists everywhere.