DAM Announces Frederic Remington and Winslow Homer Show

The Denver Art Museum – which just wrapped up its Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature retrospective – will launch another big exhibit next month: Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington. The show will look at how these two artists captured the spirit of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as urbanization and industrialism took hold and the West was colonized.

While Homer was known for his paintings of the Eastern Seaboard and Remington depicted the drama of the Western frontier in sculptures and paintings, the artists had a couple of things in common: Both were self-taught and celebrated for their ability to capture the spirit of the country.

“The first exhibition of its kind, Natural Forces will present visitors with new aspects of the two artists’ oeuvres and stories that contributed to Homer and Remington’s legacies as distinguished figures in American art,” explains Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM, in a statement announcing the show. “We look forward to showcasing an exhibition of Homer and Remington works connected by the time in which they lived, a time of rapid urbanization, industrialization and modernization across America.”

The exhibit will be divided into five parts, starting with the artists' iconic works and how they relate, followed by sections on illustration, their connections to the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York, and clashes between humans and nature, as well as melancholy works from the height of their careers.

“To our knowledge, there is no solid evidence that these two artists ever met, but we believe they had to have known about each other,” says Thomas Brent Smith, curator of Western American Art at the DAM. “We look forward to demonstrating Homer and Remington’s shared artistic experiences and themes that captured the hearts of Americans of the time, elements that contribute to shaping a compelling exhibition narrative.”

The exhibit was organized by Smith and Jennifer Henneman, the DAM's associate curator of Western American Art, along with Diana Greenwold, associate curator of American Art at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, and Maggie Adler, curator of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

The exhibit debuts at the DAM on March 15 and runs through June 7, then travels to Portland, Maine, and Fort Worth. It

Natural Forces will be included with general admission to the museum; visit the DAM website for more information.