Frederic Remington 1861 - 1909

George L. Eaton, Ogdensburg, New York
Frank Augsbury, Ogdensburg, New York
Frank Augsbury, Jr., Ogsdenburg, New York
J.N. Bartfield Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1985

Bruce Wear, The Bronze World of Frederic Remington, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1966, p. 62
Harold McCracken, The Frederic Remington Book: A Pictorial History of the West, Garden City, New York, 1966, illustration of another example fig. 365
Peter Hassrick, Frederic Remington: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture in the Amon Carter Museum and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Collections, New York, 1973, no. 83, p. 191, illustration of another example
Patricia Janis Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, illustration of another example p. 125
Michael Edward Shapiro, Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington, Washington, D.C., 1981, pp. 70-72, 113, illustrations of other examples figs. 56-61
Michael Edward Shapiro and Peter Hassrick, Frederic Remington: The Masterworks, New York, 1988, pp. 199, 206, 210, 227, 231, illustration of another example p. 185
Michael D. Greenbaum, Icons of the West: Frederic Remington's Sculpture, Ogdensburg, New York, 1996, pp. 78-83, 201, illustrations of other examples pp. 77, 79-83

Very good condition. Bronze rests on a 1 inch wooden base.
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Originally titled The Triumph, Remington's fourth bronze was given the more descriptive moniker The Scalp after 1900, when the artist transferred the model to Roman Bronze Works from the Henry-Bonnard foundry, which used the sand casting method. Roman Bronze Works was the first foundry to employ the cire perdue, or lost wax, process in the United States and Remington was one of the first American sculptors to take advantage of this technique. Michael Edward Shapiro writes that "The lost-wax method, though practiced since ancient times, had been all but superseded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the sand casting process, with its simpler, more methodical steps. At the end of the nineteenth century, the lost-wax method was rediscovered in Europe and, through people like [Riccardo] Bertelli and Remington, popularized in America. More labor-intensive than sand casting, the method allowed a foundry to cast richly inflected and undercut wax positives  (copies in wax of an original model) in a single piece and an artist to make alterations in the posititves, thus creating variations between individual bronze castings" (Frederic Remington, The Masterworks, 1988, p. 195). Only two other Remington sculptures, the Bronco Buster and the Wicked Pony, were cast by both firms.

The Scalp's drama is created by the strong lines of the horse's stance, three of its legs fixed firmly to the base, the other flexed forward in a high-stepping gait. The bold gesture of the Sioux, his arm raised in a victorious display, is matched by his facial expression, frozen in a triumphant howl. R. W. Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine wrote Remington in March 1906, after viewing several of the artist's bronzes. Though he could not recall its title, Gilder was especially taken with The Scalp: "My Dear Remington: I went the other day to see those ripping bronzes of yours ... There was one that impressed me especially, as it had more beauty than some of the others, tho [sic] they all have the beauty of life. I mean the solitary Indian with his arm up, apparently shouting defiance to the whole tribe of the paleface. What do you call that one? You seem to sum up the wildman's attitude in that one gesture; and the horse in that is especially fine (Allen P. and Marilyn D. Splete, Frederic Remington—Selected Letters, 1988, p. 360).