Remington's "The Winter Campaign"

Frederic Remington, The Winter Campaign, Oil on Canvas, 1909

A review of this work written on December 11, 1909 says, "The Winter Campaign - a group of soldiers squatting about a fire, with their horses huddling close to them to keep warm - expresses, as only Remington can the oneness of feeling of animals and men in the face of nature's menace of death.

Indeed, 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. One sees the death's-head through the skin of the lean faces of his Indians, cowboys and soldiers; his figures are clothed and desperately active skeletons, and even about his animals there is strong suggestion of the nearness of the moment when their bones will lie bleatching in the desert."

From Frederic Remington, "The Color of Night." Image from flickr user unforth.