Frederic Sackrider Remington New York, Kansas, Connecticut (1861 - 1909) "Buckskins" Portraits of the Old West original folio of eight color prints Biography from the Archives of askART: Frederic Sackrider Remington was born on October 4, 1861 in Canton, New York and brought up in that small town in northern New York, the son of a local newspaper publisher. From a very early age he showed artistic talent. In 1872 the family moved to Ogdensburg, New York, where Frederic was enrolled in a military academy at the age of fifteen. In 1878 he convinced his parents to let him take art classes at the newly formed School of Fine Arts at Yale University. He soon became discouraged with the tedious routine of academic art instruction and turned his interest to athletics; a tough fellow, he soon won respect as a boxer and adulation as a star varsity football player. Remington's father died in 1880; the same year Frederic quit Yale after less than two years. His love of horses drew him westward. Remington had an amazing capacity to make himself at home in whatever group he joined. In the East he was at home in the best clubs, a gourmet who appreciated rich food and elegant conversation. But whenever he crossed the Missouri River, he became a frontiersman. In 1885 he studied briefly at the Art Students League in New York City. He began a career as an illustrator, achieving great fame as a specialist in cavalry life in the West and later in cowboy and Indian themes. Having exhibited paintings since 1887, he was elected an associate member of the National Academy in 1891. He experienced frontier America from Canada to the Rio Grande; the horses he loved were key figures everywhere he went, depicted in every manner of action. Then Remington discovered that New York editors were hungry for black-and-white pictures to accompany the weekly stories in national magazines. He was a fine sculptor as well as a good writer and artist. He executed all his sculpture in the last ten years of his life. It is tragic that Remington was only forty-eight when he died as a result of uncontrolled obesity. In December of 1909, he died the morning after Christmas from a ruptured appendix. Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California. Sources: James A. Michener in Reader's Digest, May 1977 Catalogue of the Timken Art Gallery 16 1/2"H x 12 1/2"W x 1/8"D