Creative Connections

The impact of Charles Russell’s friendship with pioneer dude rancher Howard Eaton appears twice in our current exhibit, Charles M. Russell: Storyteller Across Media. The first occurrence is in Russell’s 1916 oil painting Man’s Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed. In the bottom left corner viewers will see an inscription to Eaton from his friend CMR.   Charles M. Russell | Man's Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed (Weapons of the Weak; Two of a Kind Win) | 1916 | Oil on canvas | 30 x 48.125 inches   Detail of Man's Weapons showing Russell's [...]

What do we see when we picture the American West? Perhaps Native women, elderly Indigenous men, or Anglo cowboys. Commonly imagined through art and film, these have been the consistent images of the American West that are still accepted to this day and that, until recently, very few people have questioned. This imagined West was very real for generations of people and remains the way that, for many people, we picture this place. Another way the “Old West” is imagined and imaged is through erasure; a time and place that is supported by those we do not see. In a [...]

“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 [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Soundtrack of the American West Final Movement The Last Round Up   Well, pardner, fall is almost here, and we’ve reached the end of the trail.  It’s been a while since we opened the gate to this musical rodeo, but there’s still so much more to the music of the American West.  Maybe we have time to listen to one more cowboy song before we wrap up the series:  “The Last Great Roundup”.   In this final post for [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Soundtrack of the American West Symphony of the Border Sinfonía de la Frontera   ¡Hola, mis amigos, y bienvenidos a la sinfonía de la frontera!   For this symphony of the border, we turn our attention to the southwest to hear the music of the Mexican borderlands.  We will listen to las canciones de los vaqueros (songs of the Mexican cowboys), and los corridos de las contrabandistas de la frontera (ballads of the border smugglers).  Many of these songs [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Soundtrack of the American West The Other Artists   With a few exceptions, previous posts have explored the musical context of paintings by either Charlie Russell or Frederic Remington; in the last two posts, we even listened to their “playlists.”   In this blog, we’ll return to the “Soundtrack of the West”, but we’ll listen to paintings by the other artists represented at the Sid Richardson Museum.   We have heard from three of these artists before: William G. [...]