The Mexican Major

Frederic Remington · 1889

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

87 × 124.8 cm (34 1/4 × 49 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

*The Mexican Major* presents a lone officer on horseback with the quiet authority that made Frederic Remington the defining visual chronicler of the late nineteenth-century American Southwest. Remington painted this in 1889, a period when he was travelling extensively through the borderlands of Mexico and the American West, filling sketchbooks with the figures, horses, and terrain that would become his signature subjects. His technique was grounded in direct observation — he was a meticulous note-taker who collected authentic equipment and clothing to ensure accuracy — and that attention shows in the weight of the major's uniform, the posture of the horse, and the dusty atmosphere that places you squarely in that landscape. Unlike many of his contemporaries who romanticised the West from a distance, Remington was physically present in the places he painted. The work is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it stands as an example of Remington's early mature style before he moved toward the looser, more nocturnal work of his final decade. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional pigments, preserving the tonal warmth and textural depth of the original so that Remington's disciplined brushwork — and the quiet dignity of his subject — come through in full.