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拍品专文
Holding itself in near-impossible suspension, Frederic Remington's The Horse Thief is among the rarest and most technically daring bronzes, capturing a fleeting moment of perilous motion. A horse and rider surge forward through space, their flight anchored only by the sweep of a windblown buffalo robe. Every line arcs toward motion, the taut musculature of the horse, the rider’s backward glance, the robe’s rippling edge that doubles as both action and architecture. Light plays across its contrasting surfaces: the smooth polish of bronze flesh against the thickly worked hide. Modeled in the spring of 1907, The Horse Thief was among the final sculptures Remington completed before his death two years later. With only three known casts—the others in the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana—The Horse Thief remains one of the rarest bronzes the artist produced.
Conceived as his only freestanding relief sculpture, this technically challenging work demanded weeks of experimentation in Remington’s New Rochelle studio to perfect its weightless illusion. On March 21, 1907, he noted in his diary that he “worked on the ‘Horse Thief’ model,” and six weeks later recorded it finished. In a copyright application dated May 22, he described the composition plainly: “nude Indian on horse holding buffalo skin with right arm as protection… buffalo robe flying in air.” (Icons of the West: Frederic Remington’s Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 138) Yet the work is anything but simple. With the horse’s three visible legs lifted in motion, its weight rests not on the ground but on the sweeping curve of the robe—a technical and visual device that carries both structure and narrative force.
Its dynamism reflects Remington’s fascination with the science of motion. Like many artists of his generation, he studied Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering stop-motion photographs of galloping horses, which revealed that all four hooves left the ground mid-stride. Freed from the “hobbyhorse” conventions of earlier equestrian art, he rendered motion believable through observation. The Horse Thief feels airborne not through exaggeration but because it aligns with what the eye—and the camera—had newly confirmed.
By the time he conceived The Horse Thief, Remington was working at the height of his sculptural powers. What began with The Broncho Buster (1895), his breakthrough translation of Western motion into three-dimensional form, evolved into a sustained exploration of what bronze could do. Technically, The Horse Thief marked another advance. The horse and rider are modeled with smooth precision, set against the buffalo robe’s rough, heavily worked surface. As Michael Edward Shapiro observes, by this stage Remington had moved “from the smooth surfaces, translucent patinas, and linear realism of his initial sculptures” toward “richly kneaded, darkly encrusted, and increasingly expressive surfaces.” (Frederic Remington: The Masterworks, New York, 1988, p. 171)
The work also tested the limits of a partnership already six years in the making. Since 1901, Remington had worked closely with Riccardo Bertelli, founder of Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn, the first American foundry to cast exclusively by the ancient lost-wax method. This process allowed Remington’s vigorous modeling and intricate textures to translate faithfully into bronze, enabling him to undercut forms and push balance to its limits. As Shapiro wrote, Remington’s bronzes "fused complex sources from many of the most talented American and European sculptors of the time... realizing a fin de siècle vision of the American West so compelling that it enfolded suggestions of aspiration and struggle, victory and defeat within its forms.” (Frederic Remington: The Masterworks, p. 171)
In The Horse Thief, those dualities are cast in metal. The rider’s tightened frame and the horse’s muscular thrust embody both triumph and peril—a moment of escape caught between freedom and pursuit. Formally, the work builds on the support system Remington developed for The Cheyenne (1901), where a buffalo robe supports the figure’s weight from below. Here, that device becomes the organizing force of the entire relief. Like Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Equestrian Monument of Constantine (1654–70) in the Vatican’s Scala Regia, the composition uses flowing drapery as structural scaffolding, transforming mass into motion. The parallel underscores Remington’s instinctive Baroque sensibility. A lifelong admirer of Hellenistic statuary, he favored twisting poses, diagonal compositions, and turbulent surfaces.
While formally audacious, The Horse Thief also extends Remington’s ongoing mythography of the American West. The subject, a Native American rider making off with a stolen horse or fleeing pursuit, echoes the high-action narratives that dominated his art. By 1906, Remington’s vision of Native Americans had grown more complex. Decades of illustration had cast them as alternately as formidable adversaries and noble survivors. In his novel The Way of an Indian (1906), praised by Theodore Roosevelt for its insight into Native character, he attempted to inhabit an Indigenous point of view—a rare effort among his contemporaries. Yet in sculpture he remained drawn to the charged moment of encounter. Its protagonist is both outlaw and exemplar, embodying the endurance and ingenuity Remington associated with a vanishing world.
Among Remington’s rarest bronzes, The Horse Thief distills his pursuit of motion, mastery, and myth into enduring form. Yet, despite its ambition, only three lifetime bronzes were produced. While Roman Bronze Works ledgers list the first two sales in 1909 and 1911, none of the casts bear edition numbers. The other two casts entered the collections of Phillip Cole and Richard Norton and now reside in the Gilcrease Museum and the R.W. Norton Art Gallery, respectively.
After Remington’s death, the sculpture’s rarity was sealed. In her will, Eva Remington ordered that all her husband’s models be destroyed after one final cast was made for the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. Yet, six sculptures were never recast, including The Horse Thief, likely because the original models no longer survived. The edition for this sculpture therefore remains at only 3 casts, with the present work the only in private hands. This extremely rare bronze stands as a lasting testament to Remington’s collaboration with Bertelli and to his ability to transform motion into permanence, capturing the restless energy of the American West in enduring form.
Conceived as his only freestanding relief sculpture, this technically challenging work demanded weeks of experimentation in Remington’s New Rochelle studio to perfect its weightless illusion. On March 21, 1907, he noted in his diary that he “worked on the ‘Horse Thief’ model,” and six weeks later recorded it finished. In a copyright application dated May 22, he described the composition plainly: “nude Indian on horse holding buffalo skin with right arm as protection… buffalo robe flying in air.” (Icons of the West: Frederic Remington’s Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 138) Yet the work is anything but simple. With the horse’s three visible legs lifted in motion, its weight rests not on the ground but on the sweeping curve of the robe—a technical and visual device that carries both structure and narrative force.
Its dynamism reflects Remington’s fascination with the science of motion. Like many artists of his generation, he studied Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering stop-motion photographs of galloping horses, which revealed that all four hooves left the ground mid-stride. Freed from the “hobbyhorse” conventions of earlier equestrian art, he rendered motion believable through observation. The Horse Thief feels airborne not through exaggeration but because it aligns with what the eye—and the camera—had newly confirmed.
By the time he conceived The Horse Thief, Remington was working at the height of his sculptural powers. What began with The Broncho Buster (1895), his breakthrough translation of Western motion into three-dimensional form, evolved into a sustained exploration of what bronze could do. Technically, The Horse Thief marked another advance. The horse and rider are modeled with smooth precision, set against the buffalo robe’s rough, heavily worked surface. As Michael Edward Shapiro observes, by this stage Remington had moved “from the smooth surfaces, translucent patinas, and linear realism of his initial sculptures” toward “richly kneaded, darkly encrusted, and increasingly expressive surfaces.” (Frederic Remington: The Masterworks, New York, 1988, p. 171)
The work also tested the limits of a partnership already six years in the making. Since 1901, Remington had worked closely with Riccardo Bertelli, founder of Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn, the first American foundry to cast exclusively by the ancient lost-wax method. This process allowed Remington’s vigorous modeling and intricate textures to translate faithfully into bronze, enabling him to undercut forms and push balance to its limits. As Shapiro wrote, Remington’s bronzes "fused complex sources from many of the most talented American and European sculptors of the time... realizing a fin de siècle vision of the American West so compelling that it enfolded suggestions of aspiration and struggle, victory and defeat within its forms.” (Frederic Remington: The Masterworks, p. 171)
In The Horse Thief, those dualities are cast in metal. The rider’s tightened frame and the horse’s muscular thrust embody both triumph and peril—a moment of escape caught between freedom and pursuit. Formally, the work builds on the support system Remington developed for The Cheyenne (1901), where a buffalo robe supports the figure’s weight from below. Here, that device becomes the organizing force of the entire relief. Like Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Equestrian Monument of Constantine (1654–70) in the Vatican’s Scala Regia, the composition uses flowing drapery as structural scaffolding, transforming mass into motion. The parallel underscores Remington’s instinctive Baroque sensibility. A lifelong admirer of Hellenistic statuary, he favored twisting poses, diagonal compositions, and turbulent surfaces.
While formally audacious, The Horse Thief also extends Remington’s ongoing mythography of the American West. The subject, a Native American rider making off with a stolen horse or fleeing pursuit, echoes the high-action narratives that dominated his art. By 1906, Remington’s vision of Native Americans had grown more complex. Decades of illustration had cast them as alternately as formidable adversaries and noble survivors. In his novel The Way of an Indian (1906), praised by Theodore Roosevelt for its insight into Native character, he attempted to inhabit an Indigenous point of view—a rare effort among his contemporaries. Yet in sculpture he remained drawn to the charged moment of encounter. Its protagonist is both outlaw and exemplar, embodying the endurance and ingenuity Remington associated with a vanishing world.
Among Remington’s rarest bronzes, The Horse Thief distills his pursuit of motion, mastery, and myth into enduring form. Yet, despite its ambition, only three lifetime bronzes were produced. While Roman Bronze Works ledgers list the first two sales in 1909 and 1911, none of the casts bear edition numbers. The other two casts entered the collections of Phillip Cole and Richard Norton and now reside in the Gilcrease Museum and the R.W. Norton Art Gallery, respectively.
After Remington’s death, the sculpture’s rarity was sealed. In her will, Eva Remington ordered that all her husband’s models be destroyed after one final cast was made for the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. Yet, six sculptures were never recast, including The Horse Thief, likely because the original models no longer survived. The edition for this sculpture therefore remains at only 3 casts, with the present work the only in private hands. This extremely rare bronze stands as a lasting testament to Remington’s collaboration with Bertelli and to his ability to transform motion into permanence, capturing the restless energy of the American West in enduring form.