“Yes; you cannot have a black shade out in the open, and the atmosphere
there causes that particular shade. That one above, though, which is
also a study, shows an almost steel gray shadow, while that other
one is still darker. These are ‘color notes,’ of Indian ponies, and
bronchos. There is no crest or arch to their necks. They are really
degenerated horses, but they can go.”
On a pedestal was a casting of the “Broncho Buster.”
“You must have modeled in clay before you did that.”
“No, that was my first attempt. I had never put my hands to clay
before. Painting and modeling are about the same. You must know anatomy
in both. I never intended to have it cast, but some of my friends, on
seeing it, said I should, so I had it done. ‘Bunkie,’ which means, in
the army, ‘comrade,’ is my second work.”
It was only in 1885 that Mr. Remington turned his whole attention to
art. On leaving Yale, where he was more devoted to football than to
study, he served for a brief period as confidential clerk to Governor
Cornell, at Albany. But that life was too prosaic; and, in 1880, he
caught the fever, “to go west.” He went to Montana, and became a
“cow-puncher.” Later, he made money on a Kansas mule ranch, and was
cowboy, guide and scout in the southwest. When he had run through what
he had earned, he returned to Kansas City, where the shops displayed
his first work. They possessed the now well-known Remington style, but
the colors were daubed on so that they looked like chromos, although
the drawings had that muscular dash and action for which his work is
noted.