Remington & Rusell and the Art of the Ameri

This coffee-table-sized book is an overview of the art (paintings and some sculpture) of the American West, as epitomized by the works of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Author and artist, Kate F. Jennings has also written books on other American artists such as Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. Although Remington and Russell personify Western art for many of us, Jennings represents them as "heirs to an old and rich tradition...the full magnitude of their accomplishment can be appreciated only in the context both of that tradition of the colorful history from which it sprang." She supplies that context through a discussion of artists such as Charles Bird King (1785-1862), George Catlin (1796 -1872), and Karl Bodmer (1809 - 1893), along with a selection of their sketches and paintings. The Western artists who were contemporaries of Remington and Russell, and those whose work came later into the 20th Century (such as N.C. Wyeth and Georgia O'Keeffe) are also represented in this large, colorfully illustrated volume. Paintings of Indians, fur traders, cowboys, buffalo, and horses are embedded in a short, lively chronicle of the American West. This 176-page book evokes the grandeur and history of our Western states. Highly recommended.