Powerhouse: The George A. Rentschler Collection
The Brinton Museum’s exhibition of art from the George A. Rentschler Collection marks the first time the exhaustive group of works has been featured outside the University of Wyoming.
In 1980, the George A. Rentschler Room opened on the fifth floor of the American Heritage Center, in the University of Wyoming’s William Robertson Coe Library. The gallery, which was requested by Rentschler’s family to appear as it once had in his library at One Sutton Place in New York, features a powerhouse collection of art by two of the great masters, Frederic Remington and Henry Farny. Born in 1892 in Fairfield, Ohio, Rentschler was a Princeton-educated man. He married in 1936 and throughout his life partook in numerous hunting trips through Wyoming’s Powder River basin. This, perhaps, shaped his avid interest and lifelong passion for collecting Western art.
Now, an unprecedented opportunity takes place at the Brinton Museum in Big Horn,
Wyoming. Marking the first time the collection has ever been shown in its entirety outside of the University of Wyoming, The George A. Rentschler Western Art Collection features 13 Farny paintings and one Remington on loan from the American Heritage Center.
“The Farny paintings are prime examples of his work having been executed at the height of his career, 1881 to 1910, while the Remington oil represents the height of his career as America’s leading illustrator,” says Kenneth L. Schuster, director and chief curator at The Brinton Museum.
He continues: “End of the Race is to my mind the most powerful painting in the George A. Rentschler Collection and ranks as one of Henry F. Farny’s finest works.” Considered a masterpiece of the Western genre, the oil tells of the end of the Native people’s nomadic way of life, and expresses concern for the diminishing of tribal culture. “The canvas is dated 1881 and was painted shortly after Farny’s first visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which spans part of North and South Dakota,” says Schuster. “It is safe to say that its theme reflects what Farny and many of his contemporaries, Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell included, surmised the plight of the nation’s Native American population to be.”
The Old Buffalo Trail elicits the iconic Farny composition. A gouache that the artist executed in 1900, the piece depicts a peaceful band of Native Americans making their way down a mountain. Schuster comments, “The buffalo skull most likely refers to the near extermination of the buffalo and places the depiction as artist’s illusion rather than reality.” Another piece by Farny, a 1908 oil titled Rounded Up by God, “represents the ultimate ‘Oh Damn’ scene of Indian and white conflict and one unusual for Farny; paintings such as this played to the late19th century stereotype of Indians as savages, one the artist did not hold.”
A scene evocative of the typically peaceful nature of Farny paintings, Wood, Water, and Grass features a group of Native Americans with their horses resting in a valley. The warm glow of evening sunlight casts tinges of oranges and yellows over the mountaintop, while a soft light illuminates the subjects below. Farny’s
The Thunder Horse takes on a darker palette, with washes of subdued grays and neutrals as a single-file line of Native Americans on horseback grow deeper in shadow as the eye moves back within the composition. In the far distance, smoke billows from a passing train. “Farny presents us with an evening image depicting a train headed off into the distance and a band of Lakota traveling quietly in the
opposite direction,” Schuster says of the piece. “The figure leading the party crouches, as if startled by this rapidly moving metal beast and the noise it generates, while the rest of the party quietly glance at the speeding train, seemingly unaware of the impact it and its contents will have on their nomadic ways.”
For the discerning collector and the casual viewer alike, the name Remington needs no explanation. “He was the top magazine illustrator of the 1880s through the early 1900s,” Schuster reflects. “Remington’s imagery differs drastically from Farny’s—his work is about action, and his compositions often focus on that alone with the landscape just hinted at with quick brush strokes. Remington’s images of American Indians differ drastically from the tranquil, peaceful settings that his contemporary Henry Farny painted. His favorite subject was the U.S. Cavalry.”
Included in the George A. Rentschler Collection is a monochrome oil on canvas by
Remington, [Arizona Territory], which dates back to 1888. [“The piece] is one of the primary illustrations for “A Scout with the Buffalosoldiers,” an article which Remington wrote and illustrated for Century Magazine. We are presented with a dusty 10th Cavalry patrol riding single file across the desert in Arizona Territory on a routine scouting mission up to, into, around and back from the San Carlos Apache Reservation. The small party of black cavalry troops is led by Lt. Powhatan Clarke, Remington is the rider
behind Clarke wearing the white pith helmet,” Schuster explains.
Rentschler died in 1972, after which his love of Western art was memorialized at the University of Wyoming eight years later, with work on the Rentschler Room having officially begun in 1976. After the American Heritage Center’s Centennial Complex was completed in 1993, the Rentschler Room moved from the William Robertson Coe Library to its present location. According to the University of Wyoming, “the Rentschler paintings, along with the collection of paintings by Alfred Jacob Miller that hang in the AHC’S Loggia and on the third floor, remain at the center because of specific agreements with their donors...in 2011 Pamela Rentschler, widow of [Frederick, son of George Rentschler], donated the remaining four Farny paintings to the center to be hung in the Rentschler room. Together, the Rentschler and Miller collections are now identified by the art museum and the AHC as ‘The University of Wyoming Collection of Western Art.’”
The George A. Rentschler Western Art Collection will remain on view at the Brinton Museum through Labor Day and is made possible through the museum’s partnership with the American Heritage Center as well as a grant from the Edwin T. Meredith Foundation.