On the heels of his smash hit The Bronco Buster (0827.33, 0827.34), Frederic Remington must have been disappointed by the poor sales of his second work, The Wounded Bunkie (0826.35). Only 12 sand casts were made at Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company compared to 64 of The Bronco Buster, and no lost-wax casts were made later. The $400 sticker price and the sad subject, a wounded soldier, may explain its lack of popularity. The Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company dominated American art bronze production at the time Remington entered the market, and their skilled workmanship is evident on this cast, which is made in more than 10 separate sections joined after casting. The finishing work—putting the sections together, disguising the joins, plugging holes and coloring the surface—is first rate. Can you see any joins?
From the exhibition:Frontier to Foundry: the Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection, December 2014 - March 2015.
Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2014.
Curatorial Remarks:
This lifetime cast does not have a cast number.
Information given by Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2018
Remington is known as one of the premier artist of the American West. During the 1880s, he traveled through the Dakotas, Montana, the Arizona Territory, and Texas, returning to New York in 1885, with the desire to record the vanishing wilderness. In 1895, he began to exhibit his bronzes of cowboys and horses in motion. After 1900, his illustrative style shifted to one of Impressionism, as he became influenced by the work of Monet, Childe Hassam, and John H. Twatchman. In addition to his paintings and sculpture, he wrote eight books and numerous short stories on the Wild West. Comment on works: western
Related People:
Frederic Remington Art Museum, related to - any American art museum, Ogdensburg, founded 1923
Remington, Eva Caten, spouse of - person American wife of artist, died 1918
The Henry-Bonnard foundry, named for the two French bronze founders who launched it in 1872, was by 1884 operated by another Frenchman, Eugene Aucaigne, who transformed the Manhattan company into the most productive and expert bronze foundry in America during the last 15 years of the nineteenth century. The foreman of the celebrated Barbedienne foundry in Paris was one of many French workers reportedly recruited by Aucaigne.
Although sculptor Paul Bartlett worked with Henry-Bonnard to successfully cast one of his own works in lost wax and had served as liaison for the company’s hiring of French foundry workers, Frederic Remington’s jump to Roman Bronze Works indicates that Henry-Bonnard had little continuing success with lost wax. They continued making sculpture by sand casting until 1926.
From the exhibition:Frontier to Foundry: the Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection, December 2014 - March 2015.
Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2014.
