Works of Art

In September 1903 Remington entered into an agreement with Collier’s to have the magazine reproduce at least one painting per month in full color, without any editorial control or connection to an accompanying text. The contract was to last four years, and the artist was to receive one thousand dollars per painting, for a minimum of twelve thousand dollars per year. The first painting in the series, for the issue of September 26, 1903, was this one—His First Lesson. The scene derived from the artist’s trip to an American-owned ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico, nearly ten years earlier. At that time, Remington had chronicled life at the ranch in a series of articles for Harper’s Monthly. He described the “great straggling square of mud walls” that included adobe corrals and outbuildings inhabited by American cowpunchers and Mexican vaqueros. He sketched the “yellow sunlit” walls and the surrounding country “running away like the ocean into a violet streak” toward the “blue line” of the distant mountains.

Those colors can be seen in the sun and shadow of Remington’s painting, as two cowhands make ready to break a wary and frightened horse, whose right rear leg has been tied up to keep him off balance. The men seem to resemble Remington’s description of the Texas foremen at the ranch, each of whom wore “heavy chaparras, a slouch hat, and a white ’boiled’ shirt.” The foremen’s duties, according to the artist, comprised “anything and everything,” including breaking recalcitrant horses that no one else could ride. Remington’s painting is notable for its looser brushwork and vibrant colors—both the result of his interest in the impressionist style. The sunlit foreground contains small islands of dappled color amidst violet shadows; warm hues of burnt orange and mustard yellow are set against patches of irridescent green the artist himself accurately described as “burning bright like opals.”