Coming through the Rye,

1902

Among Frederic Remington’s twenty-three bronze sculptures, <em>Coming through the Rye</em> is the most ambitious, featuring four animated horses and riders in a composition remarkable for being largely elevated off the work’s base, with the leftmost horse completely suspended. Based on a drawing from the 1880s and cast in an edition of apparently less than twenty, it was accurately described by the artist as "men represented as being on a carousal." Although the artist had not begun exhibiting his sculptures of cowboys and horses until 1895, he had for two decades been producing similar two-­dimensional portrayals of the frontier, many widely reproduced as prints and illustrations. Collectively, these works helped construct for an increasingly settled east coast audience a romanticized image of the American West as appealingly rugged and without restraint.