A trip to Mexico in 1889 provided Frederic Remington with a wealth of firsthand material for paintings and illustrations created later in his New York studio. Here Remington depicted a vaquero, a Mexican horseman similar to the cowboys of the American frontier. The figure sits astride his horse at an elevated position, his head and torso above the horizon, outlined by the pale blue sky behind him. Portraying the man with a direct gaze and his hand on the reins, Remington suggested that the vaquero was a fixture of the local terrain. The artist created a version of A Mexican Vaquero as a wood engraving, which appeared in Harper’s Monthly in 1891.
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Theodore Ayrault Dodge, “Some American Riders,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 83 (July 1891), 204–214, ill. p. 209.
Harold McCracken, Frederic Remington, Artists of the Old West (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1947), 130.
Harold McCracken, The Frederic Remington Book: A Pictorial History of the West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1966), 184, no. 261.
Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, Volume I (Buffalo Bill Historical Center / University of Washington Press, 1996), no. 1165.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings and Bronzes by Frederic Remington Lent by the George F. Harding Museum, June 21–Oct. 10, 1969.
Mt. Vernon, Ill., Mitchell Museum, Harding Foundation, Medieval and Renaissance Armor and Weapons, Remington Paintings, Bronzes and Drawings, Dec. 5, 1981–Jan. 31, 1982, cat. no. 405.
Art Institute of Chicago, Frederic Remington, Sept. 1–Oct. 11, 1982, no cat.
Corning, NY, The Rockwell Museum, Remington’s West, Sept. 6–Nov. 4, 1984, Michael Duty, p. 6, ill.
Phoenix Art Museum, Frederic Remington’s Southwest, Jan. 4–Mar. 15, 1992, James K. Ballinger, p. 36, ill.; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Apr. 19–June 12, 1992; Omaha, Neb., Joslyn Art Museum, July 11–Sept. 6, 1992.
Art Institute of Chicago, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier 1890–1940, June 28–Oct. 13, 2003, cat. 82, fig. 4, p. 84, 169.
George F. Harding Museum, Chicago, by 1982; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982.
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