Already established as a painter and magazine illustrator, Frederic Remington copyrighted his first bronze, Bronco Buster, in 1895. It met with immediate critical and commercial success. Sketching the piece for Owen Wister, who pioneered American Western fiction, Remington wrote, “my oils will all get ‘old mastery’ [like] molasses, my watercolors will fade – but I am to endure in bronze.” Here, he tackled a favorite subject – a bucking horse testing the rider’s strength. So well did Remington capture a mythic ideal of rugged individuality that more than 300 authorized casts of the Bronco Buster were made over a twenty-year period. The BMA’s bronze was cast during the artist’s lifetime in 1906. Remington individualized each lifetime cast by manipulating its metal surface.