What kind of a place is the West of Frederic Remington? Is it like the West you read about in “Buffalo Bill”? How does a specific painting compare to the story you read?
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With his dynamic representations of cowboys and cavalrymen, Frederic Remington created a mythic image of the Wester frontier that still inspires the imagination of the “West” in many Americans’ minds today. As a Easterner himself, Remington depicted images of the West that people wanted to see and hoped to see. They struck a mythic type of cord that inspired people to seek further exploration into the heroic, independent, and exciting world that was the West. By focusing on cowboys and men of undaunted courage, Remington can arguably be credited for the perceived imagery of the Western frontier and the elements of masculinity and heroism that accompany these images.
Remington’s artistic expression of the West is very similar to the stories in the “Buffalo Bill” narration as many of his portraits depict a solitary man and his horse confident in the landscape that surrounds them. Particularly, the story titled “A Ride for Life” contains elements of Remington’s self-portrait picture showing a cowboy similar to Billy heroically and confidently asserting his power over the landscape, animals, and presumably the Indians of the Wild West.