The Western Art of Charles M. Russell

Charles M. Russell (1864 - 1926) was an artist of the Old American West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western US and Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures. Known as 'the cowboy artist', Russell was also a storyteller and author. Russell's mural titled Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the state capitol building in Helena, Montana. His 1918 painting 'Piegans' sold for $5.6 million at a 2005 auction. He worked as a cowboy for a number of outfits, and documented the harsh winter of 1886-1887 in a number of watercolors. Beginning in 1888, Russell spent a period of time living with the Blood Indians, a branch of the Blackfeet nation. Russell the artist arrived on the cultural scene at a time when the "wild west" was being chronicled and sold back to the public in many forms. It is now clear that Charles Marion Russell himself did not realize how great a legacy he was to leave. Its richness is indisputable - he came to Montana just in time to see the passing of the frontier, and he had the talent and the instinct to record it. he came not to paint or sketch or model, but to live; he wanted to a cowboy, not a famous artist. That he became both, and at precisely the right time, resulted in a body of art and literature whose universal value is impossible to overstate.