The Advance-Guard, or The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1890

Frederic Remington (American, 1861–1909)

Frederic Remington crafted this scene of bloody confrontation for white audiences east of the Mississippi River, who imagined the West as a place of both danger and opportunity. An unseen Sioux warrior has shot a cavalry scout, who slumps over his horse while the troops behind him flee the ambush. A sculptor and illustrator as well as a painter, Remington was famous for his dynamic compositions of frontier life, which presented mythologized views of encounters between Native and settler-colonial communities in tantalizing color and detail. Although he traveled to western locations to sketch or gather material on assignment, he executed most of his work in his New York studio, including The Advance-Guard, which was later reproduced in Harper’s Weekly alongside an article by the artist.

Status: On View, Gallery 171
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Frederic Remington
Title: The Advance-Guard, or The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)
Place: New York (Place depicted)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed recto, bottom-left, on ground, in red pigment: "Frederic Remington- / 1890•".
Dimensions: 87.3 × 123.1 cm (34 3/8 × 48 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: George F. Harding Collection
Reference Number: 1982.802
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/97910/manifest.json

New York Times (January 9, 1893).
New York Daily Tribune (January 14, 1893), 7, col. 5.
New York Sun (January 14, 1893), 2, col. 7.
New York Times (January 14, 1893), 8, col. 4.
Frederic Remington, “The Advance Guard, or The Military Sacrifice,” Harper’s Weekly (September 16, 1893), 886, ill., 888–889.
Remington, 1895, 55 (ill.).
Earle 1924, 265.
Downey, 1941, ill. opp. p. 234 as The Ambush.
Frederic Remington, Pony Tracks (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), ill.
Harold McCracken, The Frederic Remington Book: A Pictorial History of the West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), no. 212.
Peggy and Harold Samuels, ed. The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington (Doubleday, 1979), 110, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report, 1982–83 (Chicago, 1983), fig. 20, 26, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Record of Sharing with Chicago’s Masterpiece (Chicago, 1983), 8, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1988), 97, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1987–88 (Chicago, 1988), fig. 18, 39, ill.
Allen P. and Marilyn D. Splete, Frederic Remington: Selected Letters (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 119, 121.
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), 369, no. 1207.
Judith A. Barter, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier 1890-1940, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New York and Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2003), 82, 168, cat. 73, fig. 2 (ill.).
Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai: Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 8.
Peter H. Hassrick, et al., Frederick Remington Catalogue Raisonné, accessed May 5, 2020, http://remington.centerofthewest.org, cat. 01207, as The Advance–Guard, or the Military Sacrifice.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights of the Collection, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 93.
Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai: Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 8.

St. Louis, 1892.
New York, American Art Galleries, 1893.
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. 405.
Art Institute of Chicago, Frederic Remington, Sept. 1–Oct. 11, 1982, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890-1940, June 10–Oct. 16, 2003, cat. 73.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 8.

Frederic Remington, 1890; E.H. Wales, 1893. George F. Harding Museum, Chicago, by 1982; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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