Course: The Metropolitan Museum of Art > Unit 1
Lesson 13: War and conquest- Negroli, Burgonet
- Tiepolo, The Triumph of Marius
- Matisse, The illustrated book, “Jazz”
- Byzantine Plate with the Battle of David and Goliath
- Trumbull, The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar
- Master of Belmonte, Saint Michael
- Remington, The Old Dragoons of 1850
- Beyond Battle
Remington, The Old Dragoons of 1850
Met curator Thayer Tolles on history and myth in Frederic Remington’s The Old Dragoons of 1850, 1905, cast 1907.
Remington’s ambitious group includes five horses and four riders: two American cavalrymen, from the United States Regiment of Dragoons, and two Plains Indians. The Dragoons, who patrolled the land west of the Mississippi River, have closed in on the fleeing Indians, and the men are locked in hand-to-hand combat. While the soldiers’ uniforms, rifles, and accoutrements are historically correct for 1850, Remington’s Indians are closer in type to those he had known in the West in the 1880s and 1890s.
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- Does anyone else find the emaciated, thieving Indians VS. the lawgiving, strong whites, a deeply problematic dichotomy?(4 votes)
- I like to think that the artist purposefully made this image to cater to the market he was selling it to (upper class, east coast, white males) so that it would sell better. But yes, I kind of cringed at the description of the sculpture.(3 votes)