The Blanket Signal

Remington's exhibition at the Knoedler gallery in New York ran from 29 November to 11 December 1909, and this canvas was in it. A Boston couple, William Alfred Paine and his wife Ruth, bought it there. About two weeks after the show closed, the painter was dead.

A lone rider on a pony waves a blanket, the kind of long-distance signal Plains peoples used to send word across open country. By 1909 the wars on the plains were long over, and Remington was painting that world from a house in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where he had moved that year. He signed and dated the picture at lower left, and at lower right he painted Copyright 1909 Frederic Remington, a line meant to protect his rights in any reproduction of the image.

The canvas stayed in the Paine family for more than 80 years. Stephen and Priscilla Paine left it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1993, in memory of William and Ruth.