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“Few who would acquire a knowledge of the heavens, let him give up his days and nights to the marvels of Orion.” - Charles Edward Barns, a writer and hobby astronomer of the late 19th century   Frederic Remington completed over 70 compositions of night scenes from 1900 until his death in 1909. The artist referred to these paintings as his moonlights, and today we refer to them as nocturnes. The Sid Richardson Museum has 5 nocturnes in its collection. Our current show, Night & Day: Frederic Remington’s Final Decade, features 10 of Remington’s night paintings. Nocturnal images were crucial [...]

*The following is researched and written by Dr. Mark Thistlethwaite, Professor of Art History Emeritus, Texas Christian University* Among the striking artworks currently on view in the exhibition Night and Day: Frederic Remington’s Final Decade, I found The Herd Boy (ca. 1905; fig. 1) to be particularly intriguing. I am impressed by how Remington plays off the details of the shivering young man mounted on his scrawny horse against the vagueness of the vast frozen landscape and how the amazingly frenetic brushwork of the windswept foreground contrasts the resigned rootedness of the horse. I am also captivated how Remington suggests [...]

For over a century, the image associated with the Texas cowboys has been a white man, like those painted by artists Charles Russell and Frederic Remington as found in the Sid Richardson Museum’s collection. Yet, one-quarter of the 35,000 cowboys who participated in cattle drives from Texas between 1866 and 1895 were Black. Less understood or appreciated is that many of these cowboys learned their craft while enslaved.   Charles M. Russell | Cowpunching Sometimes Spells Trouble |  1889 | Oil on canvas | 26 x 41 inches   Where in Texas did many of these Black cowboys [...]

Our current exhibit, Night & Day: Frederic Remington’s Final Decade, follows the progression of color and nuance of brushstroke and surface texture in Remington’s late painting style. The 21 works included cover each year Remington was working in his final ten years. Starting from 1901 as represented by The Old Stage-Coach of the Plains from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, with slate gray and aqua blue to much greener color of night Remington gets to by 1906 as represented by A Taint on the Wind from our collection. The show ends in 1909 as Remington becomes more experimental [...]

One of the themes of our current exhibit, Night & Day: Frederic Remington’s Final Decade, is that of Remington’s progression from illustrator to fine artist. During his time, in the late 19th and early 20th century, illustrated magazines and books garnered wide popularity in the US, and thus earned the moniker the Golden Age of Illustration. Despite their popularity, being an illustrator did not carry the same status as that of a fine artist painter. In general, illustration during Remington’s time depicted a narrative from the accompanying text, often executed in black and white. Fine art painting was believed to [...]