The most exciting paintings of Indians and the Wild West are those of Frederic Remington. They capture the real feeling of the West because he himself lived the stories he told in pictures. After only a year and a half of training at Yale's Art School, Remington first went West in 1881 when he was not yet twenty. It was there he realized that the Old West was about to vanish forever and decided to preserve it in sketches. 

He rode through Cheyenne country, prospected for gold, accompanied the U.S. Cavalry on the trail of Geronimo. He sketched through Texas, Mexico, Arizona and the Dakotas. The past was holding off the present just long enough for him to get it all down. Perhaps no artist ever raced time as he did. 

Remington sold his first magazine illustration for ten dollars; today some of his canvases sell for $20,000. Once he became an established illustrator, he was much in demand as an artist. He illustrated Longfellow's Hiawatha and Theodore Roosevelt's cowboy articles. With Richard Harding Davis he reported the Cuban crisis, and as a war correspondent under fire his camera-like brain recorded details of battle which became masterpieces on canvas. 

In a period that admired superficially "pretty" art, Remington's work stood out starkly. His men were real, his sketches and paintings told true stories, sometimes gruesome or poignant but always honest. Despite his fame he remained a social rebel, more at home on a horse than in a New York drawing room. No matter what his commitments, he repeatedly returned West, hoarding the precious remnants of a dying era. When he died at the age of forty-eight, Frederic Remington had completed over 2,700 drawings and paintings which had appeared in over forty periodicals and one hundred forty-two books, eight of which he had written himself.

In this exciting biography the author has captured the feeling of the West and the very spirit and vitality of the man whose paintbrush has given immortality to the Old West. 

From the book