
Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago
AT-00001412The Advance-Guard, or The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)
Inscriptions
Signed recto, bottom-left, on ground, in red paint: "Frederic Remington- / 1890•".
Provenance
Frederic Remington, 1890; E.H. Wales, 1893. George F. Harding, Jr. (1868–1939), Chicago, by 1939 [Harding Collection no. 405]; bequeathed to the George F. Harding Museum, Chicago, 1939 [the museum closed in 1964 and the collection was placed in storage in Chicago and New York]; transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, July 30, 1982 [incoming receipt, RX13605, July 30, 1982; copy in curatorial object file]; accessioned by the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982.
Exhibition history
St. Louis, 1892. New York, American Art Galleries, 1893. Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings and Bronzes by Frederic Remington Lent by the George F. Harding Museum, June 21–Oct. 10, 1969. Mt. Vernon, Ill., Mitchell Museum, Harding Foundation, Medieval and Renaissance Armor and Weapons, Remington Paintings, Bronzes and Drawings, Dec. 5, 1981–Jan. 31, 1982, cat. 405. Art Institute of Chicago, Frederic Remington, Sept. 1–Oct. 11, 1982, no cat. Art Institute of Chicago, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890-1940, June 10–Oct. 16, 2003, cat. 73. Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 8.
Publications
New York Times (January 9, 1893). New York Daily Tribune (January 14, 1893), 7, col. 5. New York Sun (January 14, 1893), 2, col. 7. New York Times (January 14, 1893), 8, col. 4. Frederic Remington, “The Advance Guard, or The Military Sacrifice,” Harper’s Weekly (September 16, 1893), 886, ill., 888–889. Remington, 1895, 55 (ill.). Earle 1924, 265. Downey, 1941, ill. opp. p. 234 as The Ambush. Frederic Remington, Pony Tracks (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), ill. Harold McCracken, The Frederic Remington Book: A Pictorial History of the West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), no. 212. Peggy and Harold Samuels, ed. The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington (Doubleday, 1979), 110, ill. Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report, 1982–83 (Chicago, 1983), fig. 20, 26, ill. Art Institute of Chicago, A Record of Sharing with Chicago’s Masterpiece (Chicago, 1983), 8, ill. Art Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1988), 97, ill. Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1987–88 (Chicago, 1988), fig. 18, 39, ill. Allen P. and Marilyn D. Splete, Frederic Remington: Selected Letters (Abbeville Press, 1988), 119, 121. Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, Volume I (Buffalo Bill Historical Center / University of Washington Press, 1996), 369, no. 1207. Judith A. Barter, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier 1890-1940, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago; New York and Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2003), 82, 168, cat. 73, fig. 2 (ill.). Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 8. Peter H. Hassrick, et al., Frederick Remington Catalogue Raisonné, accessed May 5, 2020, http://remington.centerofthewest.org, cat. 01207, as The Advance–Guard, or the Military Sacrifice. Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights of the Collection, (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 93. Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 8.
Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Frederic Remington (American, 1861–1909)
- Date
- 1890
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 87.3 × 123.1 cm (34 3/8 × 48 1/2 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- painting
- Place
- New York
- Department
- Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- George F. Harding Collection
- Accession no.
- 1982.802
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