Art Institute of Chicago

The Bronco Buster

Frederic Remington (American, 1861–1909)

Date

Modeled 1895, cast 1899

Medium

Bronze with brown patina

Culture

New York City

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

A technical achievement in bronze, this composition of a cowboy attempting to tame a horse portrays an idea of the Western United States in dramatic and violent terms: white settler-colonialists in the act of subduing nature and flesh. As a painter and illustrator, Frederic Remington garnered success by crafting mythic, romanticized views of frontier life; The Bronco Buster was his first attempt to do so in sculpture. For white audiences living east of the Mississippi River at the turn of the 20th century, the artist's triumphant figures came to represent a singular—and distorted—vision of an unfamiliar American West.

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