In December 1909, shortly before his premature death from complications following
an appendectomy, Remington affixed a newspaper clipping to a page of his
diary. Reviewing the last of his exhibitions at Knoedler’s, an unidentified
critic had written “in all of Remington’s pictures the shadow
of death seems not far away. If the actors in his vivid scenes are not
threatened by death in terrible combat, they are menaced by it in the
form of famine, thirst or cold.” Among the works that prompted such
commentary was one of Remington’s last nocturnes, The
Luckless Hunter. At the center of the composition a lone figure,
huddled against the cold, rides a small Indian pony across an empty, snow-blown
plain. Hunger and starvation are the true subjects of this painting; death
the menace that lurks close by.
Frederic Remington, The Luckless Hunter, 1909, Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas
