Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877–1915

Frederic Remington (American, 1861–1909)
Fight for the Water Hole, 1903
Oil on canvas; 27 1/4 x 40 1/8 in. (69.2 x 102 cm)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Hogg Brothers Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg (43.25)

The most prolific and successful artist of the West, Remington codified the image of the cowboy and the cavalryman. As a critic noted in 1892: "Eastern people have formed their conceptions of what the Far-Western life is like, more from what they have seen in Mr. Remington's pictures than from any other source." This scene involves five armed cowboys (with a sixth cowboy—implied by the presence of six horses—presumably cropped out of the scene at the left) fighting to defend a shrinking water hole against marauding Indians. Recently, Remington's works have been read not as literal stories about the West but as embodiments of the artist's xenophobia. In such readings, the gunmen fighting Native Americans signify Anglo-Saxons defending the United States against waves of immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century.