Frederick Remington (1861-1909)

Over the last few years we at the Carriage and Western Art Museum have been able to acquire many welcome additions to our collection.  In this newsletter I want to highlight several of these new historical items.  From artwork to saddles, carriages to spurs the museum has many interesting and locally relevant treasures we would like you to view.  We hope the highlighted items will encourage you to make the journey to our museum and enjoy the local history collected and  displayed for everyone.

One very special treasure is a bronze statue by Frederic  Remington cast in the traditional “Lost Wax Process”.  With magnificent patina finishes that are hand-applied highlights that create natural variations in texture and color and then hand-rubbed to bring out the awesome detail and highlights. This bronze statue is a handmade reproduction  masterpiece.  The statue was generously donated by Union Bank and had previously belonged to Santa Barbara Bank and Trust It was seen on local television commercials in the late 1970s.  The donation was secured by our board member Angela Miller-Bevan.

Coming Thru The Rye was Remington’s first effort in using more than two horses and the original is  29″ high by 30″ wide by 27″ deep and was his    largest piece to date. They are dashing down the street, the horses at top speed, spurning the ground beneath their feet and only six of those pattering hooves touch the base. In 1989 an original Frederic Remington’s sculpture of Coming Thru the Rye was auctioned by Christie’s New York for 4.4 million dollars.  To Remington this scene represented a joyful experience of cowboys and horses having completed a strenuous cattle drive of weeks on the trail and highlights the cowboys as they are joyfully riding into the town to enjoy a night of drinking and gambling around the turn of the century.  The image was first depicted by Remington in an illustration done for “Century Magazine”  published in Oct, 1888.