American Art Collaborative

Sculpture by Frederic Remington, The Broncho Buster, cast number 26, 1895. The Broncho Buster, the first and best-known sculpture by Frederic Remington, is recognized as an icon of American art. Based on the composition of an 1882 illustration for Harper's Weekly titled "A Pitching Bronco," the preliminary clay sculpture was completed in 1895 and copyrighted in October of that year. The work, with horse and rider twisting upward through space in one fluid, serpentine movement, represents a break from the static formula used in most equine sculpture of Remington's day. An acknowledged metaphor for the taming of the West, the subject of a cowboy breaking an unruly horse was by far his most popular, suggested in the more than three hundred casts created during the artist's lifetime.