The Bronco Buster
Frederic Remington (Cast by Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company (American, 1872–1926))
Modeled 1895, cast 1899
- Medium
- Bronze with brown patina
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 60 × 54.7 × 34.5 cm (23 5/8 × 21 9/16 × 13 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- New York City
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- George F. Harding Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
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.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
