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If Catlin was the painter of the American Indians and Bierstadt the painter of the Rocky Mountains, the artist of the Western cowboys and settlers was Remington. Born in New York, the son of a wealthy publisher, Remington was a boxer and a football player at Yale University -- the last man one would expect to become the artist of the Old West. But as a boy, he loved horses and fed on the journals of some famous writers.
At the age of nineteen, he left college to look for adventures. He traveled from Montana to Texas as a prospector. Remington had always been interested in journalism. Now he began to write about and to paint and draw what he saw. The subject of the "Winning of the West" attracted the East. Magazines and newspapers were filled with accounts of prospectors' adventures, and of battles with cattle thieves and other outlaws -- all the tales that were then news and have become legends since. There were also stories by many other writers. Often these were presented by drawings and paintings from Remington's hand, but it was as a successful journalist that Remington was a great artist.