My Bunkie

Schreyvogel, like Remington, based his portrayals of cowboys and cavalrymen on a combination of firsthand experience and masculine escapist fantasy. Between 1893 and 1905 he made frequent visits to the western states and territories, collecting Indigenous and military material for the authentically detailed paintings he produced in his Hoboken, New Jersey, studio. "My Bunkie" portrays an event described to Schreyvogel by a veteran frontier trooper he met in Colorado. In the heat of a violent conflict on the plains, a soldier heroically rescues a bunkmate who has lost his mount in a skirmish with unseen Native Americans. Two other cavalrymen continue their fire, protecting and covering for their fellow soldiers. When the painting was exhibited in New York in 1900, it elicited comparisons to Remington’s "Wounded Bunkie" (39.65.46a, b) with its shared codes of comradeship and freeze-frame suspended animation.