'Cowboy' up
The Idaho Wildlife Museum in Coeur d'Alene will host the grand unveiling of the world’s only complete original-size Frederic Remington Bronze Sculpture Collection on Saturday during a private ceremony.
COEUR d'ALENE — The Idaho Wildlife Museum will unveil the world’s only complete original-size Frederic Remington Bronze Sculpture Collection at 8 p.m. Saturday between the Museum and the Riverstone Pond in a private ceremony for a few hundred people.
Frederic Remington was an American sculptor whose renowned work depicted western America during the 19th century. Showcasing imagery of cowboys and horses, Frederic Remington’s sculptures evoke nostalgia and excitement. Frederic Remington was known for first introducing action into western bronze sculpture art beginning in 1895 with his Bronco Buster sculpture, his most famous work, of which a bronze reproduction has sat in the White House since Ronald Reagan.
"It is ironic that the largest displays of Remington's western bronze sculpture art are located in the eastern United States in New York and Oklahoma," said Dan Pinkerton. "Finally, the most famous western bronze sculptor in the United States is represented for the first time with all 22 original-size bronze sculptures in one location in the West."
Remington completed 22 western bronze sculptures before he died at age 48, with his most expensive bronze — the 29-inch high "Coming Through the Rye" — selling at auction for $4.4 million.
Nowhere in the world have all 22 original-size Remington bronze sculptures been displayed in one location, until now, a press release said.
The largest sculpture, "The Cowboy", is 12-feet high and 14-feet wide and has never been reproduced in its original size, until now.
Dan and Kathryn Pinkerton and family personally photographed and measured the original "Cowboy" in Philadelphia, and hired Foundry Michelangelo in Battle Ground, Wash., to exactly reproduce "The Cowboy" in its massive size using their 3D technology and bronze foundry. As a result, the Coeur d'Alene-based Idaho Wildlife Museum will be the only location in the world that displays all 22 of Remington's bronze sculpture reproductions in their original size.
The Idaho Wildlife Museum, which is owned by the Idaho Character Foundation, showcases one of the largest collections of bronze wildlife sculptures in the world.