THE SCOUT / BUFFALO BILL / FAREWELL FOR EVER TO EUROPE - THE TRUTH. Circa 1902.
40x30½ inches, 101½x77½ cm. Stafford & Co., Netherfield. Condition B+: expert overpainting in margins; expertly-repaired tears and restoration in margins, image and along unobtrusive vertical and horizontal folds.
This is one of at least three variants of this poster, originally printed by Forbes in 1888, subsequently printed by A. Hoen, Baltimore, and then in England by Stafford. Paul Frenzeny was a French-born American artist and illustrator, known for the many illustrations he made for Harper's Weekly as he traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast with the artist Jules Tavernier. Frenzeny became associated with Buffalo Bill around 1887, and traveled to London aboard the State of Nebraska as one of Buffalo Bill's Wild West riders. This image, perhaps the most famous of the performer as a scout, depicts Cody in his buckskins, astride his white horse with his smoking Winchester rifle in his hands. He leads a band of cavalrymen who have paused in the distance as Cody surveys the landscape. He is not looking at the viewer, but rather staring off at something he may have just shot. "In this atmosphere of stillness and tension, the only truly animated aspect of the [poster] is Cody's horse. It has cocked its head to one side, tossing its forelock and reins, and assumes the role of the one who engages the viewer - a responsibility it performs with such personality as to threaten to steal the scene" (Fox Knappe p. 49). Rare.
