Charles Marion Russell

Charles Marion Russell was celebrated for his dramatic portrayals of life on the great frontier of the Great Plains in North America. Born in 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri, Russell’s passion for the frontier life emerged at an early age. By the time he was 16, he had moved to Montana, immersing himself in the life of a cowboy, which profoundly influenced his artistic career.

Throughout his career, Russell documented the brief but stirring history of the cowboy and the open cattle ranch and was likewise drawn to the nobility of the Native Americans he knew. During the winter between 1888 and 1889, Russell lived among the Kainai Nation on their reservation in Alberta, Canada. This experience had a profound impact on the artist and his work. While among the Kainai, Russell gained a deeper understanding of the community’s history and culture, a knowledge that intensified his sympathy and respect for a way of life that was quickly disappearing. The artist’s deep respect for the Native Americans of the Plains found direct expression in his art throughout the rest of his career.

Beginning around 1890, Russell began to focus with great enthusiasm and reverence on the Native American subjects he encountered on the High Plains. The artist depicted life on the Plains in a variety of guises, ranging from scenes of the cowboy, whimsical narratives of life in the West, to majestic depictions of Native American groups striding on horses set against expansive landscapes. He captured the Native Americans’ collective spirit of the Plains, while paying tribute to a culture and lifestyle that the artist was witness to and trying to preserve.

One of the recurring themes in Russell’s oeuvre is the subject of the buffalo hunt. This remained a focal point of the artist’s interest throughout his career, beginning with an early notable work, Wild Meat for Men from 1890, and towards the end of his life in the 1919 masterwork, The Buffalo Hunt No. 39 (both in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas). This fascination with buffalo as a totemic animal of the Plains can be seen in his painting Meat for the Tribe (c.1891), which sold at Christie’s New York in 2005 for US$1,472,000. Russell also adopted the buffalo skull as his personal mark.

Russell died in 1926 in Great Falls, Montana, where he had called home since 1892. Throughout his career, Russell produced around 4,000 works including paintings, sculptures and drawings. His work remains a vital part of American art history, celebrated for its vivid storytelling and authentic portrayal of the West. The C.M. Russel Museum was established in 1953 in honour of the ‘cowboy artist’ Charles Marion Russell, housing nearly 1,000 works by the artist.