The Frederic Remington Art Museum is housed in a grand 19th-century mansion. Copyrighted photo courtesy of the Frederic Remington Art Museum.
Frederic Remington is my second-favourite artist (the first being Marj Vetter, a great artist and also my mom).
Remington was an artist, sculptor and illustrator who documented the Old West in the late 1800s, during its dying days. After trips to western North America, he would return to his studio in Ogdensburg, New York—just across the St. Lawrence River from Prescott, Ontario—to finish the works.
His most famous bronzes, such as The Rattlesnake, and paintings, such as The Sun Dance or Then He Grunted and Left the Room, faithfully chronicle the vanishing Western cultures that fascinated Eastern audiences. He studied the precise movements of cowboys and Aboriginal people, catching their most evocative moments and freezing them in time.
Copyrighted photo courtesy of the Frederic Remington Art Museum.
Remington created 22 bronzes, wrote eight books and produced 3,000 signed flat works. His incomparable career ended when he died suddenly at age 48.
He and his wife, Eva Caten Remington, did not have children. Consequently, most of his estate, along with his widow’s and her sister’s, is concentrated in the Frederic Remington Art Museum.
Sometime after her husband’s death, Eva and her sister moved to a beautiful 1810 mansion in Ogdensburg and, upon their deaths, it became the museum’s home. The estates have since been augmented by donations and gifts, resulting in a spectacular collection of Remington’s art in this small St. Lawrence Seaway town.
The building is a fittingly grand setting for the artworks. Copyrighted photo courtesy of the Frederic Remington Art Museum.
Plan to spend several hours in the various galleries, some of which include other memorabilia from Remington’s time period. There is also a gift shop, of course, selling souvenirs and a wide selection of reproductions and prints of Remington’s works.
Like many towns along the Seaway, Ogdensburg has been down on its luck in recent years. However, there are several cute bistros in the small and quite concentrated core. The town is lovely down near the water, too, and there are opportunities for cross-border bargains in the downtown shops or in the Seaway Shopping Center. All in all, it makes for a perfect day trip.
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If you go
Ogdensburg is an hour’s drive (plus a border crossing) from Ottawa. Take Highway 416 to Highway 16, which leads to the bridge over the St. Lawrence River and the border crossing. On the American side, follow NY Route 812/37 into Ogdensburg, turn right onto Canton Street (NY Route 68) and turn right again onto State Street. The Frederic Remington Art Museum is at 303 Washington Street, at the corner of State Street.