My Bunkie

Charles Schreyvogel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art