The Bronco Buster, Frederic S. Remington

The rise of the cowboy as the romantic hero of the American West began shortly after the Civil War, and Remington was one of the principal artists to play a part in that development. One of the cowboy’s most vocal supporters was the artist’s friend Theodore Roosevelt; the cowboy in Remington’s art reflects what Roosevelt had to say about the cowboy as hero. In a series of articles illustrated by Remington on his experiences as a ranchman in the Dakota Territory published in Century Magazine in 1888–89, Roosevelt described the cowboys he knew as “hardy and self-reliant as any men who ever breathed.” He praised the cowboy’s strength of character, which included a “frank and simple” approach to life, a “whole-souled hospitality” to others, and an air of “grave courtesy” to outsiders. By the time the writer Owen Wister published his novel The Virginian in 1902, such traits were embedded in the central character, thus beginning a long line of western heroes that would later appear in fiction and film. Not surprisingly, Wister dedicated his novel to Roosevelt.