Mexican Infantry "On the March"

In 1889 Frederic Remington spent six weeks in Mexico on assignment for Harper's. The country was ruled by President Porfirio Díaz, himself a former general, and Remington, known at home for American cavalry and cowboys, filled his sketchbooks with Mexican soldiers. 14 of his drawings illustrated an article on the Mexican army by the writer Thomas Janvier, published in Harper's that November.

This canvas grew out of the same trip and is dated about 1890. A column of foot soldiers moves across open ground with an officer on horseback beside them. Remington painted the title straight onto the picture in capitals at the lower left, Mexican Infantry, On the March, with his own name underneath.

It later passed through the Childs Gallery in Boston, and in 1981 Pauline Nickerson gave it to the museum.