Frederic Remington 1861-1909

Private Collection, New Jersey, circa 1935

Patricia Janis Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, pp. 124, 159-60, illustration of another example in color pl. 116, p. 125
Michael Edward Shapiro, Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington, Washington, D.C., 1981, pp. 77-81, illustrations of other examples
Michael D. Greenbaum, Icons of the West: Frederic Remington's Sculpture, Ogdensburg, New York, 1996, pp. 105-112, 190, illustrations of other examples

According to Michael D. Greenbaum, “A moment in frontier history is portrayed in the narrative imagery of The Mountain Man, completed in 1903.  Remington depicted in his ninth bronze subject a trapper and horse descending a steep hill, their motion suspended mid-stride.  He described The Mountain Man as an ‘old Iriquois (sic) trapper(s) who followed the Fur Companies in the Rocky Mountains in the 30 & 40’ties.’  The trapper, portrayed by the artist in illustrations and paintings, is a character type of the Old West that had all but disappeared by the late nineteenth century when he first began modeling.  As he did for other works, Remington relied upon photographs and a model to recreate the realistic motion of The Mountain Man.  His photograph collection contained prints of a Prussian military officer and his horse, a tight-reined, sleek mount descending a steep embankment.  At Remington’s invitation to pose, his friend and military Rough Rider, General Leonard Wood, who had served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, brought his horse to the artist’s New Rochelle studio.  . . . During Remington's lifetime, The Mountain Man was one of his most critically accepted works. It was one of two groups purchased in 1905 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and one of four subjects bought in 1907 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It remains one of his most enduring sculptural works, a striking representational image of the frontier" (Icons of the West: Frederic Remington's Sculpture, pp. 105, 107).