Frederic Remington

Provenance:
J. N. Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York.
Acquired directly from the above, 1987.
Private Collection, New York, New York.

Literature:
Harper's Weekly, March 7, 1896, p. 217 and illustrated on the cover.
Peter H. Hassrick, Frederic Remington: a catalogue raisonné of paintings, watercolors, and drawings, Cody, Wyoming, 1996, p. 580, no. 2063, illus.

Lot Essay:
By the time The Flag of Cuba, alternatively titled The Flag of Cuba-Insurgent Cavalry Drawn up for a Charge was painted in 1896, Frederic Remington had firmly established himself as one of the country’s leading illustrators, having had his first full-page cover for Harper’s Weekly published a full ten years earlier at the age of 25. Though short lived, Remington’s association with the magazine was an important and financially lucrative one for the artist.

Of arguably equal importance was Remington’s somewhat unique association with then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt and famed newspaper mogul, William Randolph Hearst, publisher of New York Journal. Remington had illustrated Roosevelt’s writings, and Roosevelt was a great admirer of Remington’s work. Said the future U.S. President of Frederic Remington: “He is, of course, one of the most typical American artists we have ever had, and he has portrayed a most characteristic and yet vanishing type of American life.”

During the Spanish-American War Remington worked under Hearst for the New York Journal and it was in this capacity that Hearst sent artists to Cuba, including Remington (accompanied by celebrity journalist Richard Harding Davis) with the intent of having the artists depict atrocities and thus gin up support for war. While Remington is known to have been adversely affected emotionally from his time in Cuba much has been written about claims–whether anecdotal or otherwise–of telegrams exchanged between Remington and Hearst in which the former is said to have informed the latter that “there is no war. Request to be recalled,” to which Hearst is said to have responded to Remington, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”

Whether such communication between the two was factual or merely purported to have taken place it has been suggested that through his art Remington helped to bring about great concern amongst Americans for Cuba’s plight at the hands of Spain, or more broadly that the Spanish-American War was the first conflict in which media involvement–possibly spurred on by depictions of wartime–helped to incite a call for military action. There is little disagreement that Remington’s magazine illustrations executed en grisaille are an important part of his oeuvre though one that he would later abandon as his interest turned to painting nocturne scenes as well as sculpture.