SOURCE: "A Summary Introduction to Frederick Remington," in Prefaces, Little, Brown and Company, 1961, pp. 175-86.

In the following essay, originally published in 1961, Dobie describes Remington's life and praises his writing and the power of his visual art.

Frederic Remington worked for only about twenty-five years. During the half-century that has raced by since he died just past his forty-eighth birthday—still in the Horse Age—his fame as depictor of the Old West has not perceptibly diminished. Yet no adequate life of him has been published. The one considerable piece of writing on his life and work worthy of respect by people entitled to an opinion is the chapter "Remington in Kansas" (pages 194-211, plus a wealth of notes, pages 355-363) in Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, 1850-1900, by the late Robert Taft, of the University of Kansas, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1953. The...