Natural Forces

Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington featured 60 artworks that revealed connections between artistic themes and techniques used by the two acclaimed American artists.

Born a generation apart, both artists succeeded in capturing the quintessential American spirit through works of art at the turn of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, an era of growing industrialization and notions of the closing of the American western frontier. Winslow Homer (1836-1910), who was considered the most original painter of his time, prospered by creating masterful depictions of the Eastern Seaboard, while Frederic Remington (1861-1909) became famous for his iconic representations of the American West. The work of these two self-taught artists continues to be celebrated as independent, innovative, and homegrown.

Natural Forces was co-organized and co-curated by a team of four curators, including the DAM’s Thomas Brent Smith, Curator of Western American Art and Director of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art, and Jennifer R. Henneman, Associate Curator of Western American Art; Diana Greenwold, Associate Curator of American Art at the Portland Museum of Art; and Maggie Adler, Curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. It will debut at the DAM before traveling to the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

A 225-page exhibition catalog, published in collaboration with Yale University Press, is available in the Shop at the Denver Art Museum and online. National leading scholars contributing to the publication include Smith and Henneman, along with Adam Gopnik, staff writer for The New Yorker, Maggie Adler, Diana Greenwold, and Claire Barry, Director of Conservation at the Kimbell Art Museum.