Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell: The Life and Legacy of the America’s Most Iconic Western Artists

Table of contents :
Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell: The Life and Legacy of the America’s Most Iconic Western Artists
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
A Native New Yorker
Remington’s Different Stints
Russell Heads in Different Directions
Staying West
Persistence Pays Off
Russell’s New Profession
The End of an Era
Fame and Fortune
Remington’s Legacy
Online Resources
Further Reading
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

Citation preview

Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell: The Life and Legacy of the America’s Most Iconic Western Artists By Charles River Editors

Smoke of a .45 by Charles Marion Russell

About Charles River Editors

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Introduction

The Emigrants by Frederic Remington The exploration of the early American West, beginning with Lewis and Clark’s transcontinental trek at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, was not accomplished by standing armies, the era’s new steam train technology, or by way of land grabs. These came later, but not until pathways known only to a few of the land’s indigenous people were discovered, carved out, and charted in an area stretching from the eastern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the present-day borders of Mexico and Canada. Even the great survey parties, such as Colonel William Powell’s exploration of the Colorado River, came decades later. The first views of the West’s enormity by white Americans were seen by individuals of an entirely different personality, in an era that could only exist apart from its home civilization. The American mountain man, with his myriad skills, could endure isolation in a way most could not. He lived in constant peril from the extremes of nature and from the hostilities of cultures unlike his own. In an emergency, assistance was rarely available, and he rarely stayed in one place long enough to build even a simple shelter. Travel in the American West relied upon a specific calendar, and to ignore it could be fatal, as many discovered, to their

misfortune. Winter in the mountainous regions of the Rocky Mountains and Cascades was lethally cold to explorer and settler alike, but desert areas and grass plains presented difficulties as well. The network of rivers flowing west of the Mississippi on both sides of the continental divide served as early highways to the Wyoming and Montana regions, the Oregon Territory, Utah and Colorado, and the California southwest. Some were placidly tranquil, while others raged through the extreme elevations, all but defying navigation. Naturally, the West was an endless source of fascination for those who were either personally or circumstantially ill-suited to travel there. As explorers opened trails and people expanded the frontier, unusual walks of life like cattle drives and hunting became commonplace, as did images of dusty boomtowns. Before the Transcontinental Railroad connected the Atlantic and Pacific, the Old West possessed a distinctly separate culture from the East Coast, and cowboys, early settlers, and an enormous array of indigenous peoples produced a hybrid culture that seemed doomed to disappear as a result of the inevitable modernization. The subsequent growth of print journalism fed the East Coast’s interest in the West, whether it was based on fantasy and non-fiction, but with the art of photography in its infancy by the years of the Civil War, a more familiar type of artist stepped in to fill the need, one who like the storytellers in print could simultaneously bring both fantasy and reality to life. Painters and sculptors of the West bore little outward resemblance to their illustrious ancestors, the European masters, but they brought foreign landscapes and people to larger audiences through skillful examples of iconic Western images. Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to whet the appetite of Eastern consumers and preserve their own nostalgia on canvas. Among the most prominent artists depicting the “old” West was Charles Marion Russell, a prolific painter, sculptor, writer, and storyteller based in the heart of the Montana country. Through his years of capturing scenes of daily life between cowboys and Indians before a backdrop of exquisite Montana scenery, he was known by the names of C.M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and “Kid” Russell. As an artist greatly esteemed among art devotees and virtually all Westerners who knew him, he acquired monikers

such as the “Rembrandt of the Range” and the “Cowboy Artist.” Entirely selftrained, Russell left over 4,000 works that include paintings and bronze sculptures of cowboys, Indians, and the landscapes of the West, as well as Alberta, Canada. As an advocate and activist for the Native Americans, he supported the improvement of reservation conditions and spoke out for the Chippewa’s bid for the right to live in Montana. This right was validated by Congress in the early 20th century with the creation of the Rocky Boy Reservation. Russell sketched and painted throughout his life, defying the constrictions of a daily work regimen, but he aspired to work primarily as a cowboy for many years with the understandable assumption that his art would never provide a sustainable living. A fortuitous marriage launched Russell into international art circles, and it brought him a level of wealth never anticipated by the wouldbe cattle wrangler. By the end of the 19th century, the West had diminished as a cultural entity and rapidly lapsed into a geographical concept attempting to conform itself to the ways of the East. Russell’s vast body of work served as an “eternal commentary” on the passing of an epic American experience. With few to mark the West’s “lingering death,” Russell served not only as an artist evoking the vivid richness of Native American and cowboy life, but as a chronicler and visual biographer of an age that would not come again. He is remembered for his skill in capturing the West’s people and landscapes, helping establish a “legend largely of his own devising.” New Yorker Frederic Remington held the advantage in education and talents as a draftsman, but he did not lose himself so entirely to the Western experience. His paintings, sculptures, short stories, and novels are often centered on the military and its wars against the resident tribes. Remington, somewhat more cynical than Russell, was nevertheless a master of depicting violent action in fantastical but credible situations where life hung in the balance. He, too, lamented that the land of his youth’s fascination “had nearly vanished,”[1] even though his direct experience with that land and culture was not in the long run successful. Esteemed for his depiction of “swift action and precise accuracy of detail,”[2] Remington’s creative accounts of the 19th century’s last few decades fired the imaginations of Americans thousands of miles away from the frontier. In 1907,

President Theodore Roosevelt called Remington “one of the most typical American artists we have ever had, and he has portrayed a most characteristic and yet vanishing type of American life. The soldier, the cowboy and rancher, the Indian, the horses and the cattle of the plains, will live in his pictures and bronzes, I verily believe, for all time.” In fact, Remington’s name remains recognizable today, and his work continues to impress viewers more than a century after he was active. From the bronze statuettes of anonymous Western heroes in crisis to large-scale actions set against vast backdrops, his works found their form through mythology and by “merging his experiences and memories.”[3] Both commercially and nostalgia-driven, the dualistic personality of Frederic Remington as a person is at times a problem for modern sensibilities, but no American artist of any century has eclipsed his most famous works’ hold over domestic art devotees. Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell: The Life and Legacy of the America’s Most Iconic Western Artists chronicles the colorful lives and art of the men who helped bring images of the West to people back east. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Remington and Russell like never before.

Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell: The Life and Legacy of the America’s Most Iconic Western Artists About Charles River Editors Introduction A Native New Yorker Remington’s Different Stints Russell Heads in Different Directions Staying West Persistence Pays Off Russell’s New Profession The End of an Era Fame and Fortune Remington’s Legacy Online Resources Further Reading Free Books by Charles River Editors Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

A Native New Yorker “Art is a she-devil of a mistress, and if at times in earlier days she would not even stoop to my way of thinking, I have preserved and so will continue.” – Frederic Remington Frederic Remington was born on October 4, 1861 in Canton Village, New York, shortly after the start of the Civil War. Born into a moderately well-off family, he was a potential partial heir to the Remington Arms Company through his cousin Eliphalet Remington, who had founded the enterprise five years earlier. His father, Seth Pierrepont Remington, was an unfamiliar presence due to being away at war for four years, during which he reached the rank of colonel. Once he returned, he served as postmaster for Canton, situated only 25 miles from the St. Lawrence River and the Canadian border. A second career as the owner and editor of a local newspaper, the Plaindealer, occupied much of his attention. The family politics were best described as “staunchly Republican.”[4] The more liberal of the two major parties, the Republican Party had been established only half a decade before the Civil War, and it was based on a coalition opposing the extension of slavery in western territories.

Eliphalet Remington

Remington’s mother Clarissa, or Clara Bascom Sackrider, hailed from an old family of French Basque origin that founded the community of Windsor, Connecticut. The paternal side of the family arrived on the continent in the early 17th century, emigrating from the Alsace-Lorraine region along the Rhine River, shared by Germanic and French cultures. The eventual trek to the Americas took the family through England, and the family tree could claim a moderately distant relation to George Washington. With a decidedly military bent, Remington’s ancestors fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. In northern New York, the Remington clan owned a chain of hardware stores established by members of his maternal line who were said to have been excellent craftsmen of saddles. Such a skill was appropriate in a line of “fine horsemen.”[5] The artistic bent played prominently in the family heritage as well. Young Frederic was certainly aware of his kinship with portrait artist George Catlin, who captured numerous Native American subjects through frequent visits to the West. Catlin died in 1872, while Frederic was a young boy. Cousin Frank Tenney Johnson, a more contemporary cousin, also sought to paint the disappearing West, and he was noted for his progressive technique of depicting nocturnal illumination. In the 20th century, Earl W. Bascom, a young cousin born late in Frederic’s life, continued the family work with metal statuettes depicting Western-themed events. Colonel Remington moved his family to Bloomington, Illinois during his son’s early childhood. This may have been prompted by grave economic conditions in various parts of the East following the war, although New York suffered far less than did the South. The senior Remington may have caught the fever of westward migration, either out of military or political interest, and desired to remain near the frontier’s edge. Either way, he became the editor of the Bloomington Republican, and as the region’s attraction soon faded, the family returned to Canton in 1867 before ending up in Ogdensburg by 1872. There, Remington had the run of the town. In 1872, wearing a cap with visor and an undersized firefighter’s uniform, he posed with the heroes of Engine Number One. The business district of Ogdensburg had burned to the ground in two successive years, and when three fire companies were finally established,

Frederic became the fire brigade’s mascot. He was even invited to march in the July 4th parade with his father. As an only child, Remington displayed both a proactive and resistant personality, depending on what captured his fancy in the moment. He was an athletic child, large and strong for his age, and in line with the military tradition of the family, the senior Remington groomed his son from the beginning for entrance to the West Point Academy. The leading military institution looked favorably on the children of high-ranking officers, but acceptance was anything but guaranteed, and Frederic was by all accounts a mediocre student. Making his chances for entrance to West Point even worse, mathematics remained among his worst subjects, dimming his father’s hopes. Nevertheless, he was raised in an environment of “constant attention and approval,”[6] despite his parents’ concern that he sketched on anything available, including frequently in the margins of textbooks. Despite all signs to the contrary, the colonel’s dream of West Point for his son persisted. Frederic was enrolled at the Vermont Episcopal Institute, a church-run military school, by the age of 12. Though proud of his family’s military tradition, Frederic found military realities distasteful and inflexible in the face of his contempt for authority, albeit a well-mannered one. The most fortuitous opportunity in his mind was to study drawing at Vermont Episcopal, but he was soon transferred to the Highland Military Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, a stricter institution founded shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. The Highland regimen was hardier, but Remington had little trouble keeping up in the physical sense despite a disdain for the parental push toward the military life. Faculty and colleagues of the academy seemed to realize the futility of such an idea long before Remington’s father was willing to entertain an alternative. Sources from that time describe Frederic as “pleasant…a bit careless and lazy, good-humored, generous of spirit, [but] definitely not soldier material.”[7] In a constant state of rebellion against the military’s academic regimen, the sketching went on unabated. Unsettling to his parents was their son’s frequent observation that “I never intend to do any great amount of labor.”[8] Causing further aggravation was his belief that in the short life he was given, there was no point in wasting it on the pursuit of wealth and fame. The one concession

granted to his father’s dream was an urge to sketch everything he saw of military culture, without being forced to live it directly. While at home, Remington erected a makeshift studio for himself in an uncle’s barn. Spending considerable time there, he filled out the rest of the summer months with riding horses, fishing, boating, and camping. Before the age of 15, his passion for the outdoors was embodied within an uninformed fantasy for a pristine Western experience. He might well have risked all and bolted for the Plains had not Yale University stood in his way - his acceptance to the prestigious institution represented the senior Remington’s best alternative to West Point. If his son could not forge a noteworthy career in the military, he would at least carry a high academic pedigree, one in which art played a minimal part. In the months leading up to his arrival on campus, Frederic developed some interest in a journalistic career, and the Yale experience he envisioned was a source of bafflement to Colonel Remington. On the one hand, Frederic excelled as a boxer and played on the university football team under Walter Camp (renowned for being “the father of football”[9]), and such activities were a long-sought source of pride to his father. However, Frederic’s admission was more specifically to the Yale School of Fine Arts, which was headed by John Ferguson Weir, a noted European-trained painter of heavy industry. Drawing studies were taken from teachers such as John Henry Niemeyer, a noted landscape painter with significant studies in Paris. Even in this environment, Remington found room for conflict, resisting the practice of drawing from plaster casts rather than directly from nature.

Camp

Weir

Remington in his football uniform Among the first cartoons Remington ever published was one produced at Yale in 1878. Entitled the Bandaged Football Player, it first appeared in the university newspaper, the Yale Courant. Continuing to work with the art faculty, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he was the only male in the freshmen art classes. He made male friends elsewhere, such as Poultney Bigelow, who went on to become the editor of Outing Magazine, an important publication for Remington’s later career.

However, Frederic’s time at Yale came to an abrupt end when his father died of tuberculosis in 1880, leaving a small inheritance of $9,000. He had spent three semesters at Yale, but Remington declined to return despite his place being held open. Relocating to Albany, New York, he took a clerical job for multiple government agencies and worked as a reporter for a newspaper owned by his Uncle Mart. Between the two schedules, favorite outdoor activities were temporarily eliminated. The federal position paid reasonably well, and Remington assumed that he had gathered enough portfolio for a proposal of marriage. Each week, he returned home to Ogdensburg for visits with Eva Adele Caten, a long-time neighbor, but despite her interest in Remington, Caten’s father rejected such a proposal outright. Not only had Remington failed to meet the financial standard of a new son-in-law, but he had also studied as an artist. Such a stain among well-to-do families had long been a cultural cliché, and such a profession was simply not good enough for a respectable New York family in the 19th century. The persistent Remington experienced this rejection on multiple occasions, and while Eva’s affections vacillated with the changing fortunes of the Yale dropout, Mr. Caten’s did not. To be fair, his concerns were not entirely unfounded, because Remington hated every moment of his work for the government and soon resigned in order to pursue a long-held obsession with seeing the West.

Remington’s Different Stints “In Arizona nature allures with her gorgeous color and then repells with the cruelty of her formation—waterless, barren, and desolate.” – Frederic Remington With one love thwarted, Remington pursued his long-term passion in the Plains and Rocky Mountains. His financial profile was sufficient for a trek to the Montana country, despite the fact he was not yet 20 when he boarded a train west on August 10, 1881. Remington later observed that in his first experience, “I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat.”[10] It was also his intent to settle there in the footsteps of Charles Marion Russell, a local resident painter. Russell struggled to pay for his early years as an artist by working as a mediocre cowboy, and Remington had no intention of attempting such a profession. Instead, his first plan entailed the purchase of a cattle herd and the land to go with it.

Russell When the financial burden of that decision was too heavy, Remington aimed to make his art a successful staple of income, and though his Montana journey was a brief one, he forged connections with several publications back east before returning home. He sold a series of illustrations to Harper’s Weekly in that year, and his work appeared soon after in Colliers magazine. By the following year, he was recognized in the major cities across the East Coast. Remington’s first published pieces have survived and appear in regular exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and at the Remington Museum of Ogdensburg, New York. Remington’s first widely distributed work came to be titled Cowboys of Arizona – Roused by a Scout, and it was based on an event he read about while on his journey to Montana. When he had departed for Montana, he had done so without a full set of tools with which to draw and paint, and while in the Dakota Territory, three days after the journey began, he switched from train to stagecoach. Hundreds of miles away on the same day, a story unfolded near the Arizona and New Mexico border. A cattleman of unsavory reputation, described by a modern source as a “patriarchal Westerner,”[11] met a “violent death”[12] at the hands of Mexican soldiers. Newman Haynes Clanton was sitting by the fireside with a small group of herders when “gunfire erupted from every direction.”[13] The Mexican forces were taking revenge for Clanton’s ravaging of various Sonora ranches and villages. Only two of his party survived, and the story soon reached newspapers as far away as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Whatever his passions for the West, Remington was in an uncustomary state of want, and at the same time he was always in search of a get-rich-quick scheme. One of the city newspapers likely reached him in Wyoming with the Clanton story, inspiring his imagination. In possession of only a pencil and a crumpled piece of wrapping paper, Remington sketched an imaginary version of the distant event. Unlike his later works, which depict individuals or groups in the midst of an emergency, the sketch set the action on the threshold of crisis as the central figure is roused from sleep by a colleague. Remington wrapped the sketch as best he could and sent it off to New York. The Chief Editor of Harper’s Weekly was intrigued, not only by Remington’s sketch, but by the rustic nature of the wrapping paper and the Wyoming

postmark. Concluding that the piece was appropriate for publication, he first passed it on to an illustrator in the company with the instructions that it should first be polished for an Eastern audience. The illustrator, who had never traveled west and had never seen a cowboy, was later faulted for leaving the characters in the picture virtually unarmed, an unlikely occurrence among real cowboys. When Harper’s met personally with Remington upon his return, the sketch was finally purchased and published on February 25, 1882. Though he was grateful for the income, Remington had nevertheless lost the best and most lucrative part of the story’s timing. After his brief stint in Montana, Remington had been changed by the time he headed back east. On the way, he revived a friendship with a fellow Yale student, Robert Camp. Hailing from Milwaukee, Camp found himself in Butler County, Kansas running a herd of sheep numbering over 900 animals. Sheep did not embody the Western spirit in the same way cattle did, and Kansas offered an entirely different scenic palette for an illustrator and painter. However, a year after his first Western experience in Montana, Remington purchased 40 acres in Kansas to devote to sheep ranching. By 1883, he had joined Camp’s enterprise on the Plains, and he purchased another 40 acres without knowing if the project would suit him at all. The acreage was isolated from a community of any size, with the nearest postal station belonging to the town of Peabody. From the operation’s onset, Remington was a misfit, according to local traditions of sheep ranching. Fellow ranchers classified him as a “holiday stockman,”[14] an Eastern dilettante out to make a quick killing in the industry. However, he developed friendships in the area, and he was physically up to the task. At 5’9” and nearly 250 pounds, a local saloon keeper described him as “a bull for size and strength.”[15] Considered an attractive individual, one Kansas City matron likened him to a Greek god who “shone with the light of youth.”[16] Out of place or not, Remington was committed to the project, investing his entire inheritance on this one roll of the dice. Supplying himself with a riding horse, he purchased a mare and rode her back from Texas, naming her TerraCotta. In direct opposition to the “etiquette of the times,”[17] he seemed oblivious to the fact that no Texan male would ever do such a thing as ride a

female horse. As a whole, the cosmopolitan Yale dropout found the ranching life understandably “rough, boring, [and] isolated.”[18] Remington ultimately spent one year in Kansas before returning home to New York, revisiting the urge to marry Eva Caten. In 1884, he returned home to plead his case once more, and to secure a fresh round of funding from his mother. Despite her generous assistance, his mother’s eventual remarriage caused a rift that could not be healed. He never spoke to her again, and he observed dismissively that as a new Westerner, he now lived among “virulent haters.”[19] Fortunately, the objections of Caten’s father were overcome, so Frederic and Eva were married on October 1, 1884 before inexplicably traveling west for another attempt at the frontier. The Kansas City area was the location of choice this time, and given that it was near the hub of the Midwestern cattle industry, Remington pursued several business interests in addition to creating a studio. One by one, these enterprises failed, which is perhaps not surprising given that local lore was already rife with Remington’s shortcomings as a rancher. Widely criticized for being too lazy, Remington was nonetheless defiant enough to pursue other unfamiliar ventures, all the while rejecting others’ advice. Even in proximity to a city, the couple found Western life “wearying.”[20] It called for a type of work regimen common to a rural existence, but that was not a part of the couple’s background. Each day seemingly brought on a new version of bad dealings, as integrity remained elusive in business ventures based on flimsy contracts, and Remington was vulnerable to various swindles and betrayals. For her part, Eva had been brought to Kansas under false pretenses, believing that Remington was a successful iron broker, not the “keeper of a low saloon.”[21] The unreliable local personalities, her husband’s artistic fantasy, and the relative chaos of life on the Plains conspired to shake what remained of her already fragile confidence. Despite Frederic’s best efforts at promoting his plan for the future, Eva remained entirely unimpressed with art as a profession, the quality of her husband’s work, and with the clientele she met as a result of his work. At the same time, little support for his work as an artist could be found among his other relatives. Remington regularly showed his wife new sketches as they emerged, but they often depicted the prevalent saloon characters of the area,

and Eva was distraught over his saloon life from the start. She wondered why anyone would take the trouble to elevate such people by drawing them, much less serving them. In terms of craft, Eva was not entirely wrong to dismiss her husband’s work. He sketched regularly, but he was not devoted to improvement, and while the sketches showed promise, most of the early examples from that time are now considered “cartoonish and amateur.”[22] Remington’s belief that a lucrative market existed for his creations was met with her ongoing skepticism. The couple lived in a continuous stalemate, with his plans colliding daily with her disbelief and abhorrence of the culture. In May 1884, Remington stopped ranching, sold his interests in all other ventures, and declared that he would support his home and family through work as a professional artist. Eva apparently viewed such a decision as sheer lunacy. Having had enough, she packed her bags and promptly left Remington and the Midwest, returning to her parents’ home in Ogdensburg in a state of embarrassment. Among the most illuminating commentaries on Remington’s personal evolution was one written by Harold McCracken. The author, Alaskan adventurer, stunt aerial photographer, filmmaker and museum curator insisted that Remington’s sloth and penchant for being irresponsible are overblown. According to McCracken, accounts of nightly drinking binges in Kansas City are unlikely considering the distance required from his location. The odd case of corruption between business associates aside, no real difficulty existed between cattle and sheep ranchers, as so often occurred in the mountainous West. In the end, Eva had simply reached the end of her rope, in large part due to spasms of anti-social behavior that would have brought a regular visit from the police in Ogdensburg. Familiar and respectable norms were only erratically obeyed, and alcoholism was rampant. Remington himself was ejected from a local church in a trespassing case that involved partying in the building through the night. Even his correspondence was unsettling. In a letter to a legal friend, the dramatic Western life is depicted in real time: “Papers came all right – are the cheese – man just shot down the street – must go.”[23]

Russell Heads in Different Directions Charles Marion Russell was born in Oak Hill in the St. Louis area on March 19, 1864. His great-grandfather first arrived in the early 19th century and was the patriarch of a prominent family in the historic district. In a stroke of good fortune, both fire clay and coal were discovered on the Russell property, giving rise to one of the largest firms of its kind in the United States, the Oak Hill Firebrick and Tile Company. Young Charles’s father, Charles Silas Russell, served as general manager and then secretary of the family firm in the subsequent generation, and the family prospered more than most by regional standards. The senior Charles, a Yale man, returned from the Northeast upon his father’s death to develop the company, with side efforts as a wholesale grocer. Young Charles’s mother was Mary Elizabeth Mead of St. Louis. The most predominant traits Russell demonstrated in his life, entrepreneurial independence and artistic talent, came from the extraordinary women in his family. His paternal grandmother, of the Bent family, was in turn the greatgranddaughter of one of the “Indians” who threw tea into Boston’s harbor during the Boston Tea Party in 1773. She was politically astute and possessed an extremely well-developed set of “entrepreneurial abilities.”[24] To Russell’s great fortune, he would come to easily recognize such qualities in his adult years. With such a heritage, Charles developed a strong idea of what he was to do with his life at an early age, but as is often the case with the plans of children, the powerful urge to sketch whatever he encountered ran headlong into his responsibilities of family and school. This was made possible by the second important woman in his life, his mother, who was known in the community as a “handsome woman who was artistically inclined.”[25] She reportedly painted well enough to merit exhibitions in local events and venues, and though her son faced some resistance from Mr. Russell, she attempted to serve as an agent of encouragement for her son’s interests. Of course, it’s hard for parents to know for sure whether such childhood insistence on a single pursuit will become an authentic career, so everything was done to balance Charles’s upbringing with more practical matters. For the young boy, however, every moment spent in school felt like a wasted one. In later years, he jokingly denied “ever having set foot in school.”[26] As the

second part of the joke, he enjoyed checking himself as if remembering, and noting that one day his brother fell ill, requiring a fellow sibling as substitute. Charles not only sketched all that he saw, but he also drew upon all surfaces that came available to him. Everything among his possessions that would bear a pencil or crayon print was covered with primitive but promising images. In addition, he spent a lot of time fashioning various models out of beeswax. His biographers are certain that more than a few figurines found their way into the family kiln besides the bricks and tiles. These examples are not known to have been catalogued, but they were apparently impressive enough to merit a steady supply of the substance. He was never again known to be without a lump of it in an easily accessible pocket, along with a crayon or set of watercolors. Russell’s love of art set him apart from his young contemporaries in Oak Hill. At the same time, he harbored an equal passion for the West, the glamorized vision of a place he had never seen up close. For days on end, he played hooky from school when explorers, trappers, and soldiers appeared in St. Louis from the Missouri River. Likewise, he spent countless hours observing parties heading upriver toward the Montana country until they were out of sight. In between, he read every available dime novel based on the West, and on two occasions, he ran away from home, intending to find passage across the Plains, with little to no regard for his survival or what he might do to sustain himself there. His first flight from Oak Hill to the Plains occurred at the age of 12, and the second came two years later. The Russell family tried every authoritarian mode of discipline used in the era, but to no avail. “Bribing, punishing, and scolding had no effect,”[27] and the fantasy of Montana endured in Charles’s imagination. In despair, Charles and Mary Elizabeth sent their son to a military school in Burlington, New Jersey. One modern mode of thought discourages the use of military schools for the defiant early teenager, but with Charles Russell, to ascertain the aspect of personality most in need of correction was difficult. His “defiance” consisted only of an “idée fixe” attached to the West, and he was in no instance disrespectful, quarrelsome, or socially inappropriate. To the contrary, he was by nature a friendly type prone to drift off into his own world, one who simply stopped doing what he was assigned due to its lack of importance. In all likelihood, the most valuable experience Russell gained in New Jersey was learning to ride on a farm in Hazel Dell, on a former Civil War horse

named Great Britain. The rest of the institution’s regimen seemed to be lost on him, and the academy itself gave up on him by the end of the first term, asking his family that their son not be returned for the next term. By the age of 15, Russell had developed an intense interest in the various indigenous tribes of the Great Plains. Despite having never met a Native American, his sketchbook was filled with portraits of Native American figures during his off hours at the military school. That they were drawn with considerable skill was inescapable, made possible by the fact he had recently read an autobiography of Buffalo Bill Cody that came with illustrations. His ensuing sketch, Crow Indians in Ware Dress, suggests that he had already viewed the works of Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist who accompanied Mexican Emperor Maximilian up the Missouri River during Russell’s teens. Bodmer was an excellent source of study for recognizing the subtleties of the Missouri River tribes. Russell also expressed an admiration for German artist Charles Wimar, born four years after Russell and an immigrant to St. Louis at the age of 15. Wimar joined two expeditions up the Missouri, and once up the Mississippi. According to Russell’s view of Wimar’s work, “He knew the Indian.”[28] At their wits’ end, Russell’s parents finally decided to allow their son his Western experience in the hopes that it would “shake the foolishness out of him.”[29] A friend of the family, Wallis W. Miller, better known as “Pike,” ran a sheep ranch in central Montana and had briefly come to St. Louis. Charles went west with Miller, assigned to what was considered the lowest job in the vast continent: sheep herding. Confident that Charles would soon beg to come home, the Russell family sent him away from Oak Hill in 1880, when he was 16. Miller worked in partnership with an early Montana sheep man, Jack Waite, and Charles was signed up to work for both. Traveling to the West was no easy feat, even in the late 19th century. Reaching Ogden by wagon, the Miller party proceeded north on the Union Northern Railroad, disembarking at the end of the line in Red Rock. Continuing by stagecoach, Miller outfitted the entire party for the final 100 miles, including purchasing a four-horse team and a saddle horse for Russell. Days later, they arrived at the Miller Ranch in Judith Basin. Another type of person might have seen the new country as desolate and uninviting, but Russell was enthralled by the valley as a “hunter’s paradise,”[30]

adding that “no king of the old times could have claimed a more beautiful and bountiful domain.”[31] The task of herding sheep was as unpleasant as advertised, and Russell spent far more time sketching. Sheep, the flightiest and most fragile of the large ranch animals, had a tendency to stray, bunch up, and situate themselves in precarious terrain. Russell admitted that he was utterly negligent in these years, and he claimed that he never really knew where most of them had gone: “I’d lose the damn things as fast as they put ‘em on the ranch.”[32] Meanwhile, Miller understood artists even less well than he understood boys. Quick to tell Russell that he had no place in Montana and would never get along there, he recommended that Russell return home. Russell complied, but on his way to the stage heading for points east, he was offered an alternative job herding horses. Unfortunately, before Russell could accept, Miller arrived first and told the prospective employer that the boy “wasn’t worth his grub.”[33] The new job was lost, but the thought of returning in shame to St. Louis was intolerable, so Russell did not board the stage. Camping in the country up the Judith River, he left Miller’s employ with no money or food. His only possessions were a brown mare and a pinto pony.

Staying West

For a few days, Russell’s fate was tenuous, but when a hunter named Jake Hoover entered camp and asked Russell about his destitute condition, the artist’s fortunes began to change for the better. The ensuing relationship found the two living together in Hoover’s cabin for the next two winters. Charles’s new partner was a hybrid frontiersman, hunter, miner and horse herder, and in a fanatical search for a motherlode in his gold mine, he eventually discovered a sapphire trove instead, as little blue pebbles continued to appear in the pan instead of gold flecks. Sensing their potential worth, he sent a cigar box full of the blue stones to Tiffany’s of New York. They pronounced the pebbles to be first-class sapphires, and the cigar box yielded nearly $4,000 in profit. During their two years together, Russell obtained a quality education in wilderness living. This included learning the most subtle habits of game animals, and how to “read sign.”[34] Sketching at a regular pace during this period, as he always had, Russell maintained a “burning ambition”[35] to work as a cowboy, despite advice suggesting he was not built for it. Through Hoover, Russell came to meet Pat Tucker, a full-fledged cowboy, who offered to put in a good word despite Russell’s mediocre riding and roping skills. He was ultimately hired by S.S. Hobson and rode as a night herder for the following 11 years. Russell’s initial fantasy of being a cowboy was satisfied by this difficult and lonely regimen. In 1881, Russell rode as a cowboy on the first cattle drive connecting Judith Basin to the railroad. In the customary celebration, his fellow cowboys rode their horses into the saloon, a favorite habit among range riders, and Russell’s impressions of the event found their way into one of the first early works to be recognized for its artistic quality, entitled In Without Knocking.

In Without Knocking The urge to paint associated experiences was a great delight to Russell, but he was not yet stricken with the fever to pursue it professionally. In terms of his financial condition, he remarked that he would “rather be a poor cowpuncher than a poor artist.”[36] To that point, Charles had developed little confidence that he would ever succeed financially as an artist, as is the case with most. Riding in such a cattle drive had its grim moments as well. The 1880s may strike an observer as the early years of civilized life in Montana for white settlers and workers, but the campaigns led by the Sioux Chief Red Cloud, in which the U.S. Cavalry gave up a string of forts along the Bozeman Trail to be burned, was recent in the territorial memory. Likewise, George Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn was not yet a decade in the past. Battles continued to rage between whites and indigenous tribes, and Russell witnessed countless native deaths along the trail. His first cattle drive was halted by a chief demanding payment of $1 per head to cross Crow land. Failure to agree meant vast detours, but the cowmen refused and made ready to proceed. In response, native warriors began to snap blankets in front of the steers, causing them to stampede. Fellow cowboys could not realize at the time that once again,

Russell would use the event for two early works, Toll Collectors and A Stampede.

Toll Collectors

Russell’s painting depicting the Battle of the Little Bighorn As a night wrangler, and with minimal interest in sleeping long hours, Russell often had lengthy stretches of daylight with which to sketch and paint. Rather than patrolling the herds in his lonely profession, “he sang to the horses and cattle”[37] to keep them calm, sketching all the while. Without exception,

he carried a set of watercolors with him as standard gear, and he claimed to paint solely for the fun of it. As for the works themselves, no professional circulation yet existed, so he happily gave them away to anyone who showed appreciation for them. Little evidence exists that Russell was ever interested in a return trip to Missouri, but he did visit his family in Oak Hill in 1882. The dynamic he experienced with his parents and siblings is unclear, but apart from professional trips to the East, his return to Montana was as a permanent resident of the West. Accompanying him back to Judith Basin was his cousin, Jim Fulkerson, who was eager for a taste of the frontier as well. However, only two weeks following his arrival, he died of mountain fever. Even with the influx of settlers, Judith Basin remained a fairly open area with a limited number of families, but it was here that Russell experienced his first love when he met Laura Edgar. The daughter of a gentleman sheep rancher, the families were likely to have known one another back in St. Louis. Despite Mr. Edgar’s perception of Russell as an itinerant cowboy, the teenager was nevertheless “accepted into the Edgars’ home.”[38] Laura, affectionately known as “Lollie,” watched Russell create his early paintings and looked on with fascination. In her own journal entries, she claims to “well remember Charlie’s joy”[39] upon receiving his first letter of acceptance, not to mention the check that came with it. Laura remained in Judith Basin for two winters before the family moved away. To those nearest the situation, the mystery persisted as to why one did not follow the other, but the only explanation available was that “they just did not marry.”[40] According to Russell’s friends on the range, who watched him read her letters by cigarette light, his feelings for her were strong. When Laura got married in St. Louis, Russell was present, but he departed a week before the ceremony. Historians wonder whether he had returned to his home city for one more attempt to plead his case as a suitor. His subsequent romantic episode following Laura’s rejection occurred when he met Josephine Trigg. Neither was yet 20 years of age. Russell was drawn to Trigg’s artistic bent, and although they did not marry, she went on to provide the elegant calligraphy in future years for his verses and Christmas card illustrations.

The first cases of Russell’s artistic works achieving interest outside his general area occurred around 1886. To that point, much of his work was devoted to inexpensive calendars and holiday cards, but the Montana winter of that year was inordinately harsh, among the worst experienced by established communities. The cattle herds’ ability to survive was tenuous, and the owner of Russell’s ranch sent a letter of concern to the foreman in order to assess their condition. In response, one of Russell’s watercolors was sent to Helena, depicting a suffering steer in deep snow with “ears frozen, eyes dimmed,”[41] surrounded by a pack of starving prairie wolves. The title was Waiting for a Chinook. This referred not to the Montana community of Chinook, but to the famous winds that race down the east side of the Rockies at up to 100 miles per hour. The Native American term translates to “snow-eater,”[42] often raising temperatures by 35 degrees. As for Russell’s depiction, the owner was so taken with it that it soon appeared in a shop window in downtown Helena. There, it was shown to friends and business acquaintances, resulting in Russell’s first commissions. Several more watercolors came out of the infamous winter through 1887 while he worked for the O-H Ranch.

Waiting for a Chinook As Russell experienced the Montana country and other regions more fully, he gained a deeper appreciation of the indigenous locals, both artistically and

culturally. Such admiration led him to seek proximity to various tribes in the summer of 1888. These included the Blackfeet and their subset, the Bloods of modern-day Alberta, as well as the Piegan. Now 23, he learned the native way of life in considerable detail, and as an artist, his powers of observation were equally acute. He met and studied all social types within the tribal structure, as he had with the white man. Pursuant to his artistic work, Russell possessed an “uncanny memory”[43] for detail. He lived with the Bloods for one summer while visiting a friend in the north. Not only did Russell return to typical Western life with considerable knowledge of and empathy for the tribes of the high plains, he also enjoyed a prolific period of painting. Such works to emerge from the two years include Medicine Man, The Buffalo Hunt, In the Enemy’s Country, Wolf Man, and Spoils of War.

Medicine Man

In the Enemy’s Country

The Buffalo Hunt A few stories from Russell’s time with the Bloods are thought to have crossed a vague line into legend and outright fiction. Some modern sources

suggest that early biographers placed far too much emphasis on his time with the Bloods. Accounts of that time suggest that Chief Sleeping Thunder, son of Chief Medicine Whip, struck up a friendship with the artist and urged him to marry a girl of the tribe by the name of Keeoma. Mounting evidence creates some suspicion about Sleeping Thunder’s existence. Likewise, the presence of a maiden named Keeoma is suspect in some quarters. Russell created depictions of such a young woman named Keeoma, but that name had been created earlier by William Bleasdale Cameron as the heroine of a story to which Russell added the illustrations. Cameron, a native of Ontario, was the editor of an Alberta newspaper.

Keeoma #3 Russell’s friend Frank Bird Linderman, an ethnographer, politician and writer of the era, also takes exception to some early sources. Known among the Salish and Kootenai, he was an advocate for native rights and had written popular books on tribal legends and “trickster tales.” Linderman recalls a boat trip with Russell along the Missouri during which the two read the Lewis and Clark journals aloud and spoke of their experiences among specific tribes, establishing him as a primary source.

A Russell watercolor found its way into a publication of Harper’s Weekly in 1888. An American magazine with a heavy emphasis on politics, the publication had covered the Civil War, and now it turned its sights to other facets of the American experience, including the West. As for Russell’s view of his once fantasy country, Judith Basin was no longer to his liking after the arrival of so many new settlers. Over the following two years, he sought out more open spaces with sparse populations, but eventually he surrendered to the idea of residing in an established community and resettled in Great Falls.

Persistence Pays Off “Art is a she-devil of a mistress, and if at times in earlier days she would not even stoop to my way of thinking, I have preserved and so will continue.” – Frederic Remington Understandably heartbroken by Eva’s decision, Remington set about establishing a sketching regimen, and in a short time, his sketches and local sales of paintings were making enough money for him to sustain the bare essentials. In 1884, he won a second-class medal at the Paris Exhibition and reached an agreement with Harper’s Weekly that gave them first rights for his current work. As a reward, they undertook a massive promotional campaign on his behalf. After selling off his Midwestern residence, Remington headed west on August 15, 1885. Moving around the continent in nomadic fashion, most of his time was spent in the Southwest. Friends in Kansas were disappointed to see him go and described the would-be artist as a “warm friend.”[44] Among his closest acquaintances, the local billiard parlor owner referred to him as “one grand Fred.”[45] One source describes this period as a “purging of the soul,”[46] but it was a profitable one. He assumed the role as a hybrid artist and military correspondent, accompanying the U.S. Cavalry on patrols along the edge of the frontier through the year, but despite his admiration for all things military, Remington continued to loath the regimen and all its attending discomforts. During this period, he did everything possible to remain detached from the unit he covered. On one occasion, he apparently failed to maintain his distance, and was involved in a lengthy exercise designed to test a soldier’s endurance. His innate athleticism came to the fore, and he survived the ordeal well enough to be elected an honorary member of the troop. Once again, he was made a mascot, but he insisted on wearing an English safari helmet for future ventures in the southwestern heat. The men under his watchful, artistic eyes grew fonder of him, often joking about his weight. Since he was about 250 pounds, it was suggested that when he dismounted, “the horse appeared glad to be rid of him.”[47] In terms of his work with the cavalry, the men were fascinated with and baffled by his powers of observation. Individuals recalled a moment of self-

consciousness when Remington eyed them for a few seconds before closing his eyes and committing their images to memory with a nearly flawless gift. Apart from the distasteful regimen of the more exhaustive days, Remington came to love the Southwest and his cavalry unit, referring to the men as “my tribe.”[48] These experiences inspired many of Remington’s most notable works, which depict the cavalry in moments of violent action. In fact, it was around this time that he first acquired a reputation for eschewing American settlers in his work, making it apparent that Remington harbored little interest for the homesteader who led a pedestrian existence compared to that of the American cowboy. However, he did depict Native Americans despite being condescendingly dismissive of those he encountered. Unlike Charles Marion Russell, Remington drew very few women throughout his career, to the extent that aside from Native Americans, one friend observed that “he never drew but two women in his life, and they were both failures.”[49] As interest in his paintings increased, Remington continued as an artist correspondent for Harper’s during the pursuit of Geronimo in 1886. With a solid connection to the oldest political magazine in America, his success was both rapid and remarkable in scope. However, at some point the Remington seemed to have grown tired of the desert, so he returned home to establish a residence in Brooklyn later that year. There, he met with the Harper’s editorial staff dressed as a cowboy. The Harper family apparently enjoyed the look, and fascinated New Yorkers enjoyed his stories of work as a cowboy and soldier. Of course, he had never actually been either. In conjunction with the move back to the East Coast, Remington’s financial condition significantly improved, in large part through the generosity of an uncle. Suddenly flush with the money to seek new pursuits, he became an established magazine editor, and his apparent intent to “take up his rightful responsibilities”[50] and professional stability persuaded Eva to reconcile with him, provided that there would be no relocation to the West.

Frederic and Eva in Brooklyn While she continued to profess disdain for art as a profession, neither she nor her family could dispute that despite their surprise, it was paying off. Remington was soon discovered by St. Nicholas, a popular children’s magazine, and Outing, a sports-oriented publication. In a change of heart, Eva grew fond of reminding family and acquaintances that her husband was working hard enough to support a family of 40 children. It is suggested by J. Frank Dobie that the two lived together with greater success in a more familiar Eastern setting, “childless, [but] in reasonable harmony so far as the world knows.”[51] Remington held little interest in the idea of raising children, while Eva’s views are less clear.

In a marital arrangement more befitting an explorer or Western fur trapper, Remington often left his wife alone for extended periods as he traveled to gather subject matter and satiate his residual affection for the West. Still, he claimed an “abiding devotion”[52] to his wife, and they displayed little rancor over their previous troubles. He was fond of addressing her as “kid,” while in correspondence, she referred to him as her “massive husband.”[53] Feeling increasingly secure in his decision, Remington was constantly employed by publications for his art, and he proudly declared that “cowboys are my cash,”[54] despite his wife’s persistent fear that the entire enterprise could vanish in an instant through the fickleness of popularity. Indeed, his workload increased, and at one point Remington was engaged to illustrate an edition of Longfellow’s epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. The entire project covered 22 full page plates, including nearly 400 drawings. Modern critics regard the rate of improvement of his work during this period as “astonishing.”[55]

Two of Remington’s illustrations for The Song of Hiawatha By the spring of 1886, Remington was taking painting and sketching classes at The Art Students League of New York. Created by fellow art students a decade prior to reduce a curricular gap in the National Academy of Design, the school still stands in its classical building on West 57th Street in Manhattan. Remington’s time with the League was brief, and he continued to think of himself as largely self-taught. That summer, Harper’s once again commissioned him to provide renderings based on the Indian Wars across the Plains, now being led by General Nelson Miles. The 5th Infantry’s progress was chronicled weekly in Harper’s, and by the summer’s end, Remington was sent to cover the earthquake near Charleston, South Carolina. Hundreds were killed amidst widespread destruction, and the earthquake was felt as far away as Boston to the north and Cuba to the south. In the spare time he was able to find, part of 1886 was spent in traveling the Mississippi River. As Remington spent more time traveling and working, he began to move away from illustrations and focus more on interpretive drawings and paintings. In conjunction with that transition, he developed themes for his portrayals of Native Americans, cowboys, soldiers, horses, and general life on the Plains. He sketched continuously, and he photographed liberally despite denying it in future years. Upon returning to his New York studio with the collected materials, he honed in on a specific type of Western conflict, fraught with tense and anxious motion leading to death and tragedy. Drawing from his previous sketches in the Midwest and his time in the Southwest during the Apache Wars, Remington would create some of his most famous works. A common thread in his work was that people facing life and death situations in the West were more isolated than those in the more metropolitan East, and thus they often had to fend for themselves. For example, this sense of isolation in crisis can be seen in his depiction of a Crow warrior facing death in Ridden Down. Another example was the sudden peril of ambush in A Dash for the Timber, completed in 1889. Taken from scenes based on the Apache Wars, the work demonstrates Remington’s obsession with motion, making clear that his interest extended far past still photographs of people and animals. This

explains his eventual collaboration with Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer in the development of photographic motion that led to early filmmaking. Muybridge is said to have been the individual who proved once and for all that a horse’s four hooves leave the ground at the same time for an instant within its stride, and such knowledge became essential for Western artists attempting to create realistic action scenes. In time, Remington rejected landscapes outright, and backdrops and sky were in many cases little more than an extended frame for the central conflict. Remington was both fascinated with and repulsed by military culture, and he held the same views about war in general. Though he was appalled by the concept of a mortal duel, either by individuals or nations, such combat represented a thrilling visual subject of pure authenticity and personal commitment. To him, one who would flee the obligation of such a setting was not worth a place on the sketch pad. The beauty of the land itself was not based merely on color, texture, or inorganic subject matter; instead, the continent served as an optic arena, lauded for the ferocity it housed and the tragic outcomes it permitted. As further evidence of Remington’s improvement, modern critics have compared some of his best works to his early paintings. Signaling the Main Command, completed in 1885, shows a group scene with “no air,”[56] and in which all the characters seem heavily rooted to the ground. A Dash for the Timber, on the other hand, is a masterpiece in contrast. Motion, violence, energy and buoyancy exist in tandem as the hooves of the horses scarcely touch the ground. In this abundant period, Remington enjoyed a comfortable and fairly set regimen. He generally worked from early morning to the midafternoon before taking a long ride in the vicinity.

Signaling the Main Command

A Dash for the Timber Over the following two decades, Remington published such scenes for 41 periodical publications as he rose to the upper echelons of American art. Depicting scenes of the West that people on the East Coast were generally not

accustomed to, his book illustrations were found among the pages of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Owen Wister, and Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Remington’s paintings were widely exhibited in art shows by the end of the 1880s. Assignments from Century Magazine included a series of sketches regarding the adjustment of Native Americans to reservation life. The paintings continued to capture hypothetical but ultimately credible acts of indigenous life. However, the Century commissions highlighted the nation’s preoccupation with indigenous relocation. A detour from the artist’s original mission, such illustrations emblemized the passing of the true West into a quasi-Eastern state of refinement. Through Century and Outing alone, Remington earned $12,000 in one year, the equivalent of three times a teacher’s salary. He observed with overt satisfaction that such a life was a “pretty good break for an ex-cow puncher.”[57] Such was Remington’s deception that the public, riveted by the Western depictions, accepted him as a fully-credentialed Westerner, despite the fact he was little more than a visitor to the Plains and the frontier. Naturally, he took no pains to correct public perception. While continuing to publish in Harper’s and adding Scribner’s Magazine to his portfolio, even the publishers were drawn to his “breezy cowboy demeanor.”[58] Remington’s commission to create three illustrations for a book authored by Theodore Roosevelt entitled Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail boosted Remington’s reputation as Roosevelt rose to public acclaim. Roosevelt and Remington shared some similarities. Following the death of his first wife, the future president had settled into his own ranch in the Dakota Territory, and he characterized life there with “obvious joy.”[59] Like Remington, the “Rough Rider” had lost money on his interest in the ranch and seemed unable to make a success of the enterprise by mixing his Eastern experiences with his Western fixation. In 1888, Remington had painted Mule Train Crossing the Sierras, and when it was unveiled a few years later, it coincided with the release of the Roosevelt book.

Mule Train Crossing the Sierras A significant boost to Remington’s career came when he produced a fullcolor oil entitled Return of the Blackfoot War Party, which was exhibited at the National Academy of Design near the end of the 1880s. The National Academy exhibit fulfilled the artist’s wish for national recognition as a painter, not an easy transition for an accomplished illustrator attempting to escape the reputation of a chronicler.

Return of the Blackfoot War Party Included in that event were A Dash for the Timber and A Cavalryman’s Breakfast on the Plains, based on a joke among cavalrymen that the first thing one wants in the morning is whiskey and a cigarette. Other works in the exhibition included Aiding a Comrade and The Scout, one of Remington’s first bronze statuettes. So convincing was Remington’s view of the West that many believed that he had spent more time there than was the case. Milton E. Milner, whose cattle operation nearly went out of business due to the harsh winters of the late 1890s, consulted with Remington on a location for a new ranch. Shipping up to 15,000 head of cattle per year and importing trainloads of Texas and Oregon cattle, his operation took Remington’s advice with great seriousness.

A Cavalryman’s Breakfast on the Plains

Aiding a Comrade By the start of 1890, Harper’s alone carried well over 100 of his sketches and drawings. Assignments from Outing and other commissions kept pace,

and he enjoyed the first of his one-man exhibitions in New York. Any exhibition in a major New York City venue was likely to elicit press from important newspapers, and sure enough, the New York Herald declared that one day, Remington would be “listed among our great American painters.”[60] At this point, Remington was already among the most successful illustrators of the age. The black and white drawings made in his early career had taught him how to use lines with great sophistication, and as part of his palette of effects, he developed a distinctive technique for nocturnal subjects interacting with darkness, perhaps based on his cousin Frank Tenney Johnson’s “moonlight technique.” Among the prime examples of this style was The Mess Tent at Night. Debuting in 1890-1891, this masterpiece of light and shadow is now housed at the Whitney Western Art Museum in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.

The Mess Tent at Night

Russell’s New Profession

The unveiling of Frederic Remington’s A Dash for the Timber left Eastern patrons “spellbound,”[61] and one critic further declared that in order to truly appreciate such works, “You’ve got to see these things in person.”[62] This helped generate interest in paintings of the West, and by 1890, Russell had begun to sell a few paintings in Lewiston, Montana. Overly modest and lacking a business sense for turning a hobby into a profession, the number of buyers nevertheless increased on the local level. A stranger in Great Falls commissioned two paintings, but when asked the price, Russell realized that he had never given it any thought. Working in a cowboy environment where none of his colleagues had money, he jokingly came out with a price of $50. Russell later observed, “I thought I hit him good and hard,”[63] only to be amazed when the stranger put a $100 bill in his hand, assuming that the price was $50 each. Self-assured enough to refrain from protesting, Russell recalled, “I just bought the fellow a drink, and kept the rest.”[64]

Remington’s A Dash for the Timber By the end of 1890, word had gotten out regarding a peculiar Montana artist making illustrations of the West. A New York firm took the step of publishing 14 of Russell’s early oils in a small portfolio entitled Studies of Western Life, still widely available in the present day through online outlets. The following

year, the Lewiston Argus reported that the “cowboy artist has painted a picture on the vault door of the bank.”[65] The small mural was based on a rider and horse theme, and it took a total of six hours to complete. For his efforts, Russell was paid $25. The modern pay equivalent adds a perspective to the transaction, casting it as better than it might be at first glance. A rate of just over $4 per hour was undoubtedly more respectable in 1891, but the money never made it home with Russell. Almost out of wearable clothes, he headed to the general store to outfit himself, but he was waylaid by a hungry cowpuncher friend, and Russell gave nearly all of it away. That same year, the artist again demonstrated his lack of business discipline by falling in with gambler Charlie Green. Promising enormous sales and a guarantee of $75 per month, he put Russell under a contract for all his works. Every piece completed during the first year would become the property of Green, and naturally, Russell’s propensity for painting when moved to do so fell under the wheels of Green’s slave labor schedule. Required to paint from early morning to dusk in the manner of laborer’s hours, the two soon split up and Russell had little to show for the association. However, still more clients appeared, and before long a Great Falls bartender similarly contracted for all of Russell’s work. The arrangement was by all accounts far more reasonable, and for the first time, he could afford to consider a change from riding the range to painting and sculpting without interruption. By 1892, Russell was a full-time resident of Great Falls and living as an artist. Life was not opulent by any means, but it was sustainable. A group of Russell illustrations appeared in the 1894 book Cattle Queen of Montana by Elizabeth May Collins. Also in 1894, Russell illustrated eight books on native legends, including How the Buffalo Lost His Crown. The exposure of his work in these volumes was helpful, but he had not yet fulfilled the income potential available for such commissions.

A picture of Russell painting in Great Falls Fortunately, Russell’s loose approach to professional promotion and all things financial were soon to become a thing of the past. In 1895, at the age of 32, Russell met Nancy Cooper in Cascade, Montana, and she would go on to be the most enduring and important female influence in his life and career. Several accounts claim that Cooper, born as Mamie, was not yet out of her teens and was Russell’s junior by well over a decade, but others claim that she was by various accounts either 14 years or four years younger than her husband-to-be. Born on a Kentucky tobacco farm, Nancy possessed an incomplete and starkly rural elementary school education designed for basic competency in correspondence and numbers, but the smitten Russell quickly recognized that his future wife possessed talents so extraordinary that few would have believed them without seeing them in full force. With no credentials to suggest such skills, Nancy nevertheless proved to be a master negotiator, was wise beyond her years to an artist’s need for flexible time and space, and had an impeccable and fierce instinct for commercial transactions, despite no experience to warrant it. Once committed, she was maniacally loyal and feared no one in any company, regardless of prestige. Their chance meeting occurred during a hunt from which other members retired for the night. Nancy, unable to sleep, stayed up, and as they began to fall for each other, Russell’s friends assured her that the painter had forgotten all about Laura Edgar. In her adolescent brilliance, she replied that Edgar was the nicest thing that had ever happened in Charles’s life, and by that logic, she

should not and “cannot be forgotten.”[66] True to form, Russell painted Laura from memory in several poses through the coming years, and in pictures of multiple characters, she was always cast as “the most romantic of the group.”[67] It was Laura who encouraged Nancy to attend night school for enhancing her secretarial skills as she shouldered Charles’ business responsibilities. As a woman on the frontier, Nancy faced the same issues of those who were of marrying age. Seeking a man with preexisting wealth or sure prospects was the sensible course, but in lieu of that, she considered her feelings for Russell and based her commitment on an unshakable belief that she was the missing component in his professional life that was so needed. Thus, they were married within a few months.

Charles and Nancy Willing to endure lean years, she had barely been married Russell before initiating a campaign on behalf of his works along the East Coast. Her singleminded pursuit of his success was unassailable. Despite living in a one-room shack in rural Montana, her tender age, lack of experience, and lack of formal education, the publishers, dealers, and collectors in major cities back east listened. Ginger K. Renner, in an issue for Montana Magazine entitled Charlie Russell and the Ladies in His Life, noted that at this time, Russell was a man with little sense of direction. He moved about regionally, traveling here and

there for little discernable reason, painting by impulse. Renner, who emphasized the feminine side of Russell’s life, recounted the artist’s remark that “a woman can go farther on a lipstick than a man with a Winchester and a side of bacon.”[68] However, one must surely presume that he knew better, because his wife was the engine of their lives, without which success would have proved unlikely at best. According to Renner, “She endured when their resources were low…[and] made him proud with her handsome appearance when times were good.”[69] Regardless of her age, Nancy Russell was confident enough to coexist with her husband’s fantasy view of his subjects, some white, but many more Native American. With a romantic fascination for native women, he painted 300 oils, watercolors, and drawings centered on females, mostly tribal. Some models were authentic, while others went under professional nicknames such as Dutch Lena, Maggie Murphy, Lil, and Lou. His ongoing native dream was not restricted to the young and virginal either – he was so taken with one elderly native woman that he painted her presiding over a group of children within a tipi and entitled it Kindergarten, or Storyteller. Other expressions of his almost mystical view of the Native woman were entitled Her Heart is on the Ground, and Mourning Her Warrior Dead. As this all suggests, Russell came to love Native Americans, far more than the mere admiration of his former years, and he was often referred to as the “white Indian.”[70] He shared cultural traits of using few words, speaking low, living quietly, and often practiced meditation. Lorado Taft, a noted sculptor, remarked, “No one could model his face without noticing the strong resemblance.” Charles the artist roamed in a beautiful and unique world of subjects. However, as a husband, he was ever mindful of home, a man prone to write love letters to his wife through the rest of his days, pausing only to ask her if she thought he was being silly after so many years.

A portrait of Russell

Water for Camp On a $75 budget, the Russell family put its nose to the grindstone and managed to obtain and furnish a tumble-down shack in Cascade. For the first two or three years, they enjoyed little success and were desperately poor in a

harsh Montana environment, but their rugged life had some bright spots, such as a friendship with Charles Schatzlein, owner of a local art store who sent many orders in Russell’s direction. Schatzlein sided with Nancy, often reminding the artist that he didn’t ask enough for his work. Eventually, Nancy realized that the town and region was not the market for Western art. Anyone who lived in the community or surrounding country could look out the window on any given day and see the same cowboys and Indians. However, in the East, they could not. With whatever money she could find for postage, sketches and paintings of her husband’s work were sent to every major magazine and book publisher along the Atlantic. What might have seemed a vain waste of resources at last produced a group of commissions. Among them was a $50 assignment from Emerson Hough for five paintings to serve as illustrations for The Story of the Cowboy published in 1896. Income from the book may not have seemed impressive, but aligning one’s self with the renowned Western writer was a boon for Russell’s exposure. Hough authored numerous magazine articles for publications such as Forest and Stream and Saturday Evening Post, dealt with several newspapers in the West, and authored 34 books.

Hough Among the numerous demonstrations of Nancy Cooper Russell’s resolve was one involving a legendary transaction with rancher and Wall Street banker Malcolm S. MacKay. A notable explorer, MacKay was known for tracing the big game trails through large swaths of Alaska, in addition to management of the Lazy E Ranch. Russell illustrated his own popular book, Cow Range and Hunting Trail, published just before the turn of the century, and for 20 years, MacKay “divided his time between the ranch and Wall Street”[71] as a senior partner in a Manhattan brokerage firm. Said to possess a good eye for art, he took a gamble on Russell and overtly sought him out, inviting the artist and his wife east. What he met was what one historian termed an example of “unalloyed Nancy Russell,”[72] who sensed an impending sale. She had two of her husband’s oils on hand, entitled The Smoke of a .45 and Jerked Down. Without giving MacKay a full opportunity to peruse both works, she brought

the latter forward and announced that “this will suit you best,”[73] setting the price at $800.

Jerked Down MacKay soon learned Nancy’s strategy: she was willing to bargain and offer discounts if a buyer intended to purchase several items. However, she almost never discounted on a single work, and under no circumstances did she allow for payment by installment. As she had suggested, the painting was right for MacKay, and within a brief period, he nearly begged to buy it. However, despite his wealth, immediate funds were not available for the moment, so he attempted to work a deal with Mrs. Russell for a delayed payment. He was informed that although his offer was roundly rejected, she would look forward to a time when the wealthy tycoon could muster the necessary funds. Such a response would have seemed unthinkable in that era, but Nancy Russell stood firm and “outwaited him”[74] through the awkward moment. No one is certain whether MacKay and Nancy carried on any further correspondence, but in time the deal was done to her satisfaction. Her own words on the matter are incomplete, but the art world unanimously agreed that Nancy Cooper Russell “was no sentimentalist when it came to selling art.”[75] Russell himself continued to be amazed by Nancy’s powers of persuasion, and he often remarked that she already had him earning “dead man’s prices,”[76] also known as “Nancy’s prices.”[77] He continued to stay out of the way,

dismissing any conversation about money by saying, “Mame’s the business end. I jes’ paint.”[78] As their financial situation continued to improve, the couple relocated from their home in Cascade to the county seat of Great Falls, establishing a household at 1219 Fourth Avenue North. Charles became an instant local celebrity as international critics began to make mention of him more frequently. Nancy expanded her strategy to Europe, including a major exhibition in London that brought many new followers. Women’s History Matters summarized the couple’s success story succinctly by noting, “Success came knocking at the Russells’ door, or rather, Nancy dragged it in, hog-tied and branded.”[79] Russell received a small legacy from his mother in 1900 after many long years of absence. The modest sum helped him realize his vision for a log cabin on the property to be used for studio work at any hour of night or day. In that year, he painted a self-portrait showing his own openness to life, the West, and all that it encompassed. The stance of the painting shows “the feet planted solidly, and his hat tipped back,”[80] complete with a red Metis sash indicative of an Eastern woodland indigenous culture. It was a daily feature of his general appearance which was quintessentially unorthodox to his locale. He remained good-natured but unapologetic, admitting, “I am old-fashioned and peculiar in my dress. I am eccentric (that is a polite way of saying you’re crazy). I believe in luck and have lots of it.”[81] Members of the town could not have cared less because Russell was known as a friendly presence with a “quick wit, laconic speech, and gift[ed] as a raconteur (as seen in humorous short stories and illustrated letters).”[82] He had an inordinate love of hand jewelry, and nearly always wore three or four large and colorful rings. Where those who knew him expressed little objection or even interest in his sense of fashion, Russell himself was observant and accepting to the extreme, remembering every detail of everyone he met as part of an artistic identity. Such accuracy worked its way into every one of his works.

Russell’s log cabin studio in Great Falls

One of Russell’s self-portraits The fantasy cabin Russell envisioned three years earlier came into reality by 1903, due in large part to Nancy’s continued efforts. He did not enjoy the process of the construction, and he mostly declined to participate, but once the

structure was complete, he was in bliss over the artistic solitude. The space was filled with all manner of native clothes, tools, and weapons in addition to an extensive collection of cowboy gear and Western props. Not merely an interesting collection, every item served as a contributor to detail. In her notes, Nancy recounted that Charles “loved that telephone building more than any other place on earth.”[83] During this time, Nancy saved enough from art sales for the couple to visit New York City. There, the couple toured galleries, met with figures within the city’s art business network, and consulted with various artists. It is believed by experts within the field that Russell’s art improved in some aspects following this journey east. He particularly enjoyed working with a group of illustrators active in the city, as they provided an artistic community, however brief, that was not available in Montana. Still, Russell found much to dislike in New York. Barely able to tolerate big city sophisticates, he was dragged to one particular dinner at which the host anticipated showing off his guest as a noted storyteller. Russell would not oblige, sitting silent and sullen through the first hour. What the host failed to evoke, the overly rare beef succeeded in bringing out. Seemingly out of nowhere, Russell suddenly quipped, “You know, our cows in Montana in the hot August sun are nearer dead than that beef served tonight.”[84] Suddenly, he was off and running with one tale after another and guests were sent home with aching sides from hours of laughter. From Nancy’s various exchanges with numerous publications, Russell’s works were soon featured in several magazines, including McClure’s and Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. McClure’s had been founded during a major depression a decade prior, and it sought to “target the rapidly-expanding middle class.”[85] Frank Leslie founded his illustrated newspaper in the preCivil War years, and it was promoted by P.T. Barnum. By the time of Russell’s visit, the document of 16 average pages was run by his widow. The Weekly featured artists ranging from Russell to Norman Rockwell. Nancy’s successful ways began to snowball during the New York visit. She conducted one of their larger sales of $500 and secured several additional jobs for an illustrator by continuing to make the rounds. Meanwhile, Russell continued to accept regional work, such as the illustrations for Bertha Muzzy Sinclair’s novel Chip of the Flying U, written under the pen name of B.M.

Bower. Sinclair would become the first woman to make her living as a writer of popular Western novels. Russell’s work pace increased when G.B. Putnam’s Sons of New York City published The Trail of Lewis and Clark and Bucking the Sagebrush and hired Russell to illustrate both projects. So successful was the first journey to the city, artistically and financially, that Nancy encouraged regular visits at one or two year intervals. As the wealth increased, a second dream was realized. For the summer months, they established a second cabin, an “alpine getaway”[86] in what is known today as Glacier National Park. On the shores of Lake McDonald, on the lower side of the present day Going to the Sun Road, Russell found the same inspiration he enjoyed in Great Falls. There, he relished a dual personality as cowboy and artist, and a “folksy philosopher-humorist magician.”[87] With the ever-present lump of beeswax in his pocket, it is purported that he could entertain by carving an animal from it while keeping it stowed away, at the same time engaging in conversation. Glacier had some of Russell’s favorite Western scenery. The date upon which he first saw it is unknown, but it is likely that he and Nancy visited in 1904 or just after. After purchasing a building lot from Dimon Apgar near the foot of the lake, the cabin was complete by 1905. It was first named Kootnaei, a phonetically errant appellation, and eventually they called it Bull Head. This signified the trademark bison skull Russell included in all his paintings, a custom that stemmed from his discovery of such a skull on his first journey to Montana. The cabin was entirely screened by trees, and a large bison skull was hoisted on the property’s front to guide visitors in by boat. Visitors came by the hundreds, and the couple swam, rowed, and took the various trails by horseback as a regular regimen. Frank Linderman recalled the Glacier summers with pleasure, claiming to never have met a “simpler, more humble man [who] hated the counterfeit of anything.”[88] Around strangers, Russell was a welcoming, genuine host, but in the company of strangers, Linderman describes him as “shy as a little girl.”[89] It is theorized that many of the most intimate Native American scenes Russell went on to depict were inspired by his experiences at Lake McDonald.

As his fame grew, those who knew Russell observed that he was possessed of an unusual streak of generosity. When one acquaintance fell in love with a particular incomplete painting of his, Russell remarked with bemusement that for some reason he had never finished it before giving it to the man free of charge. Around the Christmas holidays, he could always find time to paint the window displays for the Como Company and other establishments in Great Falls. That said, whatever inspired him required his presence and reverence to the exclusion of all else in the moment. Author Jessie Lincoln Mitchell remembered an instance in which she created a living tableau of the Nativity in the Renaissance style, at which Russell was present. According to Mitchell, her crew committed the error of mixing “Christmas cheer with the sacred meaning of Yuletide.”[90] For Russell, there was a time for everything, and a wrong time for everything. He was found in another room, lost in meditation while trying to accurately copy the authentic holy family of the Renaissance in his mind. His Stetson was placed over his eyes to shut out the inappropriate atmosphere of the hotel serving as host. Unlike his most famous counterpart, Frederic Remington, Russell did not restrict himself to scenes of battles or other dramatic events despite his considerable skill at depicting rapid motion. One critic described Remington’s unwavering approach as a depiction of “military, danger, and dread.”[91] But while he produced many works centered on the U.S. Cavalry, Russell preferred paintings of Native Americans, especially women. He had a penchant for depicting females on horseback in positions of great dignity, and in contrast to the Western military man, Russell’s hand was “forever guided by sympathy.”[92] In later years, Remington began to mellow and came to see the pride and dignity in the Native American as well. As a self-trained artist, Russell was the less refined of the two in his preparatory sketches, but the true talent was in the capture of movement. Biographer John Taliaferro, in his book Charles M. Russell – The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist, suggested that while any competent artist can sketch and paint a horse, it takes “a real eye to paint them in violent motion,”[93] adding that both artists could do this to an exquisite degree. However, Taliaferro conceded that Remington had the superior control of color and skills as a draftsman.

Russell’s Herd Quitters

The Bucker In an unusual compositional device, Russell composed his central characters against a scene at a slight diagonal, which gave women the same towering presence as the warriors. His work was strictly historical, and not merely out of preference. Behind the vast collection of Russell watercolors, oils, and sculptures is an agenda of capturing the West as he had first found it. One

biographer pointed out that he “wanted little to do with the present, and nothing to do with the future.”[94] With every piece, he celebrated only the rich traditions and historic virtues of the West, where he was to live for nearly five decades. In all that time, he never expressed a thought for leaving.

The End of an Era “After two centuries of civil administration, with its agents, its treachery, its inefficiency, and at time its horrible corruption, where are the Indians? Such as survived the flood of white immigration are living in poverty and ignorance.” – Frederic Remington In 1890, a somewhat odd pronouncement was made by the federal government. Through the American Secretary of the Census, the frontier was officially declared as “closed.” Technically, the government was announcing that so many pockets of settlement had been achieved by the white population that a frontier line could no longer be delineated, and the westward population shift conducted for over a century was now complete. The observation did not cause any noticeable shift in the white settlers’ lives, except that all indigenous groups were situated on reservations. This was accomplished courtesy of the Dawes Act, the equivalent of the Homestead Act for Native Americans. For the major Western industries and agriculture, growth continued, but for artists intent upon capturing the last vestiges of the West, it was a death knell. The great struggle between the settlers, the military, and the Native Americans was finished. The great tribes of the Plains and mountains would never be depicted in a free state again, only in the same captivity and domestication suffered by the grizzly and elk. Remington, aware of the change, did not pause in the pace of his work. In fact, his final years would be dedicated to perpetuating the cultural memory of the West, even as the subjugation of the frontier must have caused artists much grief. Charles Marion Russell was known to be upset about the permanent ramifications, but little is known of Remington’s response. Early in the decade, he and Eva moved into a new house situated in New Rochelle, New York, where they were able to maintain the expenses that came with possessing a complete studio and more living space. Now weighing more than he ever had before, Remington’s goal was to increase his exercise regimen and interact with other artists. Frederic and Eva took to calling their new home Endion, a Chippewa word that roughly translates to “the place where I live.”[95] Neighbors included several fellow artists, writers, and actors. As Russell had in Montana,

Remington laced the studio with props of earlier Western life, and a reconstruction of his studio can now be found at the Whitney Museum.

A picture of Endion As an affirmation of his success, Remington was selected as an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1891. Soon after, a collection of his watercolors would be displayed at the American Water Color Society. At this time, Remington dabbled in his experiments with impressionist painting, which was then dominated by the French art culture. In contrast to the stark and clear-cut realities of early illustrations, his subject matters grew increasingly “nostalgic, even mythic.”[96] That said, various sources suggest that he never fully embraced or mastered the technique. During his time at New Rochelle, Remington increasingly separated himself from pure illustrating, expanded his painting regimen, and took a budding interest in sculpting. Ink drawings were now intended solely for magazines, while water colors went to the various exhibitions that sought his work. A personal exhibition was held by the American Art Galleries, and in the early

1890s, he purchased what he believed to be the ultimate studio, a small island in the St. Lawrence River, in Chippewa Bay. The tiny island of Ingleneuk occupied five acres, and in an unexpected turn, his initial interest in sculpting erupted into a full-blown obsession in this summer hideaway. Remington’s basic knowledge of modeling with clay was developed under the tutelage of sculptor Frederick W. Ruckstull, and the association was no passing dalliance with the medium. Ruckstull, a French-born artist, was an instructor in clay modeling and marble sculpting at the Metropolitan Museum Art Schools. A noted art critic, he would go on to win the Grand Medal at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Even considering the nation’s recognition of Remington as a leading artist of Western themes, his ability to work with Ruckstull on a private basis was an extraordinary feat. The transition to working on bronze statues indicates Remington was interested in securing his legacy, and he praised the durability of the new medium by observing that “my oils will all get old…my watercolors will fade, but I am to endure in bronze – [that] even rust will not touch.”[97]

Ruckstull During the winter months through 1893, Remington served as a journal correspondent in both Russia and Algiers, which seemed to make sense given his past associations with Harper’s Weekly and Century Magazine. However, Russia made for an uncomfortable working environment, and it was suffering from political turbulence. Remington worked alongside a Yale friend, Poultney Bigelow, but the two were “ejected unceremoniously”[98] from the increasingly troubled country. By all accounts, Remington and Bigelow were poor guests in Russia, Algeria, and Europe as a whole. The artist is said to have “flaunted his provincialism like a badge of honor,”[99] and he was in general “vain about his future reputation.”[100] Around this time, Remington penned a letter to Howard Pyle that came to be one of his life’s only major blunders. In it, he expressed his utter disdain for Jews, so much so that he claimed to enjoy Russia because of the antisemitic

persecution that was prevalent there. Speaking of his relish for a race war, he cited a case of Winchester rifles at his disposal. The letter overtly suggests that when the massacre began, he would “get his share.”[101] The letter ended with a troubling assertion: “You can’t glorify a Jew – nasty humans – Jews, Injuns, Chinamen, Italians, Huns – the rubbish of the earth – I hate.”[102] Somehow, the letter got out and was published in a popular news outlet, causing some in the industry to turn away from him. Remington’s overt antisemitism revealed a larger xenophobic profile, but since he was professionally safe in those quarters that shared his hostilities toward non-Christian cultures, including Native Americans, he felt emboldened to continue his public diatribes. In April 1894, he provided a series of illustrations for what one source described as “the vilest and most despicably anti-Semitic pieces of the time,” entitled The Russian and His Jew and published by Harper’s Weekly. Under the influence of Bigelow, who lived into the mid-20th century as a supporter of Adolf Hitler, his opinions on Russian antisemitism during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II cast the Jews themselves at fault because they were “inherently greedy, manipulative, and deceitful.”[103] In his similar casting of the white migration westward in “grand heroic terms,”[104] Remington regularly “perverted actual historical events”[105] by describing all conflicts as the white race being savaged by original inhabitants. Paintings such as Jew Smugglers and Refugees in the Hands of the Dragoons paralleled his open contempt for immigrant groups passing through Ellis Island. Where the Native American was suitable for annihilation, blacks were, in Remington’s words, “better under the yoke.”[106] At a time when the suffragette movement was picking up steam, the notion of the women’s vote made no sense to Remington, and the idea of gender equality was to him unworkable due to the alpha male’s criteria. The best he could say about women was insultingly dismissive: “I don’t understand them. I can’t paint them.”[107] Upon his return from Russia and Algiers, Remington balanced his work regimen with visits to his favorite nature sites in the region of upper New York. Spending much time in the “North Country” near the Canadian border, he was particularly fond of Cranberry Lake. There, he sketched through part of the morning, often breaking to see if he could hit a loon on the lake with rifle fire. According to his own observations, he contributed a large mass of lead to the lake, but he was never able to hit one of the birds.

In a brief respite from his preoccupation with bronze, Remington’s creative writing came to the fore in popular collections of short stories, despite the revelations of his darker cultural sentiments. These miniature tales were collected and published from various reports sent back to Eastern magazines under the title Pony Tracks. The subjects included cavalry activities and camping trips, and Bear Chasing in the Rockies covered a wide range of western geography, but the settings were mostly the Southwest and northern Mexico. Publishers made note of his horrible spelling, which was understandably considered an odd habit for a Yale man. One editor claimed that he could recognize Remington’s work because Remington was the only writer who added an “e” to the end of the word “whom.” A particularly beautiful and valuable aspect of the collection is Remington’s own illustrations. The group of 15 sophisticated drawings of the “army and sporting life”[108] found its way into several editions, including a notable mid20th century release of Pony Tracks with a new introduction by J. Frank Dobie. As a fiction writer, Remington approached the medium by degrees and visited it sporadically, taking historical events and mingling them with hyperbole and one-sidedness. One such story was set in Chicago in 1894, the year of the Pullman riots. Dubbed Chicago Under the Mob, in which 12 men were killed, the soldiers were cast as “tall, bronze athletes”[109] while the protesters were denigrated as “anarchistic foreign trash.”[110] While the story is intrinsically true, Remington expanded it into an epic scene of carnage between soldiers and agitators. The scene never occurred in any way resembling what is depicted, but that it could have happened was good enough for Remington. In fact, he insisted that it would have “if they continued to monkey with the military buzz-saw.”[111] As this suggests, when it came to being an author, Remington had an uneasy relationship with both fact and fiction. The more a story became removed from verifiable events, the more convoluted he became, adding more characters of diminishing credibility, as if attempting to patch any literary breaches that might cause a lack of credibility. In a series of “picaresque adventures”[112] entitled Sundown Leflare, his symbolic character, a half Native American “interpreter,”[113] speaks in increasingly bizarre dialects. Remington pushed ahead in his development as a sculptor in 1895 with The Bronco Buster, which he misspelled as “Broncho.” Although he did not cease

his painting regimen, his work in bronze produced nearly two dozen examples of iconic Western scenes, and The Bronco Buster set the theme of the “human struggle to control nature”[114] as the most noble conflict of all (and ironically the most futile). Viewers can feel the pang of passionate resistance against universally steep odds, and the statue’s depiction of movement, particularly the horse’s, challenged the limits of the medium. Experimentation with color, a lightened palette, and shades so dramatically affected by light-play enlarged the event in the spectator’s imagination, lending the topic a chaotic ferocity despite its stillness as an image. The Bronco Buster and The Wounded Bunkie became his first widely recognized statues, and throughout the early 20th century, the bronze figures grew so familiar that Remington’s reputation for sculpting surpassed his paintings. The instant success of early pieces led to them being cast by New York foundries at a number approaching 300. At first, the sandcasting method was employed by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company. In this process, the sculptor’s wax or clay model is cut into pieces, destroying the original. They are covered in a slurry that is easily separated before the pouring of a bronze master, erasing lines and marks from the division. The master is cast into sand blocks, over which a second block is fit and pressed. Vents allow hot gasses to escape, and the separate bronze parts are pinned or bolted together.

The Bronco Buster

The Wounded Bunkie Theodore Roosevelt, always a Remington fan, praised the sculptures as the most impactful art pieces about the West ever made. Declaring that all the archetypal figures from the West “will live in his pictures and bronzes, I verily believe for all time,”[115] Roosevelt’s attention turned to the statuettes. In reference to them, he said, “You have struck a grim power.”[116] A little-known phase of Remington’s life and career took place in the Deep South and the Caribbean. In 1895, he visited Florida on assignment for Harper’s, illustrating a story about “cracker cowboys.”[117] The West may have been dying in the face of increased settlement and industrialism, but in Florida, a viable frontier still existed, with a population of two people per square mile in the area south of Orlando. In his correspondence, Remington noted amusingly that although the Florida frontiersman was not at all similar to the Westerner, the state has “curious cowboys who shoot up railroad trains.”[118] Like the West, cattle rustling was common, and many feuds were settled with gunfire, but Remington held little regard for this odd group. They used military saddles and carried shotguns instead of six-shot revolvers and rifles. The Florida cowboys dress included a sturdy pair of farmer’s shoes, and

they neither carried nor were proficient in the use of a lariat. Assessing the entire mindset as “revolting,”[119] Remington lost interest and spent a greater share of his time on the water, fishing for tarpon. Even this bored him after a while, and he recommended to visitors from the North that they swap out their fishing gear for shotguns (primarily used for duck hunting). The assignment was soon expanded to coverage of the Spanish-American War for the New York Journal, which was part of the far-reaching William Randolph Hearst empire. Remington found the new mission far more interesting than Florida’s deficient cowboys, and he arrived in Key West on December 19, 1896, ready to sail for Cuba. The Spanish had blockaded the island to prevent Cuban colonists from fleeing to the mainland, but eventually, an opportunity arose to reach the island courtesy of Hearst, who found him a place aboard a personal vessel, the Vamoose. The Hearst ship was considerably faster than anything owned by the Spanish, but it was too frail for the rough seas, so Remington was forced back to Key West, which he described as a “smelly bit of sandy coral, [where] the houses are built like snare drums.”[120] Anxious to catch the action before it ended, Remington finally reached Havana Harbor aboard the steamer Olivette. Seeking the “front” in every direction, not even the merest skirmish could be located. Bored, as was his frequent condition, he complained to Hearst, “There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.”[121] Hearst’s reply was immediate and ominous: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”[122] Paying no heed to the instructions, Remington returned to New York, but when the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, he sped back to Key West, eager to finally take part in the “splendid little war.”[123] In correspondence with friends, he added that “one cannot get old without seeing a war,”[124] and he described it as an excellent opportunity for artists. This time, Remington departed Key West on the battleship Iowa, but once again he failed to reach Cuban shores because of another naval blockade. He claimed to find military technology depressing and lacking the honesty of a spontaneous Indian fight. Disappointed, he once more abandoned his post, and as before, the war was reignited during his absence, so he was forced to return to Tampa in May 1898. On June 20, he arrived in Cuba on General Shafter’s ship, the Seguranca.

At last assigned to a unit, Remington followed the 5th Corps into action, which allowed him to witness the Battle of San Juan Hill. He was on hand to see some of the bloodiest actions of the war, but he also contracted yellow fever. Rattled by all he witnessed, his reports to the mainland described the gore in graphic detail. Although his “taste for adventure palled,”[125] his depiction of the Rough Riders of San Juan Hill seemed “more like a football game.”[126] Those who rode were depicted in a charge, but the personal crisis so common to individual figures in his other works was absent. Those on foot were depicted advancing rapidly, but no expressions stood out from the collective, and those who were shot reacted with common gestures and contortions to the moment. Later in 1898, Remington published a group of short stories under the title Crooked Trails. These brief tales run the gamut of Remington’s geography, from Florida to the Southwest, Mexico, and the Iroquois country in northern New York. They reflect cultural oddities and conflicts between cultures, with an underlying sense of low regard for Native Americans and Mexicans. That said, for the first edition, Remington included 40 stellar examples of his own illustrations. With Crooked Trails came eight anthologies of previously published magazine articles, two Western novels, and an “endless stream of commissions.”[127] Sundown Leflare reached its peak of popularity by the end of the 19th century, and John Ermine of the Yellowstone was published in 1902. This coincided with a shift in the era’s stylistic features, and for the first time, Remington began to fall behind the times. Bored by the illustration requests for Harper’s, he forged ahead with his bronze statuettes and returned to painting with subtle impressionistic influences. With a new method of wax casting practiced at the Roman Bronze Works, he went on to create and model 21 groups of sculptures. In the “lost wax” process, the sculptor’s clay model was transformed to a plaster and rubber one. At the time, gelatin was substituted for rubber. Liquid wax was poured inside, pink from discoloring. Excess wax was poured out, creating a hollow positive one quarter to one half inch thick. When the rubber was removed, the “chasing” process began. Extra detail was provided with sculpting tools, soldering irons and blow torches. When the piece emerged from the kiln, extra material was removed and completed with buffing and the addition of a final

patina. This period was marked with statuettes widely regarded as masterpieces, such as The Cowboy and End of the Trail.

End of the Trail After receiving an honorary degree from Yale University, Remington went on lengthy visits to Canada and Mexico for new subject material. His interest in the American military continued, no doubt in part because he was able to observe the soldiers’ lives without being exposed to the same risk. To his dying day, Remington insisted he had a deep personal understanding of the American cowboy, and he believed his own image reflected that reality. When asked about his Western cowboys, he fondly observed, “I know that gentleman to his character’s end.”[128] Whether in painting, illustrating, or sculpting in bronze, all questions regarding the target demographic of his work received the same response: “Boys…boys between twelve and seventy.”[129]

The sky in his paintings was superfluous to the point that one could scarcely tell the difference between a Cuban or Mexican setting, but Remington’s audience of “boys” remained fixated on the active subject, and he knew it. The magic lay in the man and the horse, the former in his expression and violent response to larger forces than himself, along with the nobility of the latter. To accomplish it, he observed that the creature must be painted incorrectly in order to succeed. He once said, “The angle is heroic.”[130] To Remington, that meant viewers should be looking from an upward view. The principles of Remington’s process and intent were never exhaustively pointed out by the artist, but the central requirement, as he told Edwin Wildman of Outing magazine, was that art “is the process of elimination… create the thought – materialize the spirit of the thing.[131] For the focus on a work’s topic, he added, “The interesting never occurs in nature as a whole, but in pieces. It’s more what I leave out than what I add.”[132] Remington was famously generous with friends and likeable acquaintances so long as they were white and appreciative. He once set a high price for a work desired by boyhood friend John Howard, who reluctantly wrote out a check for it, and as the months passed and the check never cleared, Howard kept asking about it. Eventually, the two met for dinner, and Howard watched as Remington lit a cigar with the check, proclaiming that the transaction was complete. Remington never fully endorsed the popular impressionist movement, but friend and writer Julian Ralph ventured that in his depictions of the soldier during this period, the homegrown American painter rivaled the French in their hard-edged military canvases, and Remington accomplished it “without imitating any Frenchman.”[133] In 1906, another one of Remington’s writing projects, The Way of an Indian, was published. In his review of the original edition, Professor John W. Bailey explained why the novel did not sell well. Through all of Remington’s life, Native Americans were cast as savage and villainous, but in his final years, some compassion and sensitivity emerged. In the story of a Cheyenne youth growing to manhood, Bailey noted the work’s depiction of the “openness between the Indian and nature.”[134]

That same year, Remington took occasion to destroy massive amounts of his own work by burning them outdoors. These 70 depictions of old Western scenes would undoubtedly have been worth millions each today, and two years later, he repeated the exercise, destroying 16 more paintings. Two of them were among his favorite: Bringing Home the New Cook and Drifting Before the Storm. Ironically, this occurred at a time when several of the most renowned American galleries overcame their reticence toward American artists and thus exhibited Remington’s work in every medium. Some of Remington’s works were exhibited by Tiffany and Company, the Knoedler Gallery, and the Corcoran Gallery. At long last, the Metropolitan Museum in New York followed suit, albeit far less wholeheartedly. As Remington worked at a “prodigious pace”[135] in his final years, the exhibitions continued. The Met at last mounted some semblance of an exhibition, as did the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum of Oklahoma City, the Sid Richardson Museum, the Gilcrease, and the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, Wyoming. By the end of 1908, Remington made a final trip to the West, and he even penned a Broadway play. With the frontier closed, he put the finishing touches on archiving the West’s qualities of “independence, individualism, and stoic heroism.”[136] In Remington’s final years, his technique for nocturnal shading reached an unparalleled state of excellence. A series of paintings based on the “color of night”[137] have been described as “magnificent nocturnes,”[138] employing the sheen of candle, lantern, moonlight, and silhouettes of the dawn and dusk hours. Among the most compelling oils Remington finished near the end of his life was On the Southern Plains. A 1907 tribute to the American soldier, several soldiers are depicted at full gallop, along with the observation that “his heroism is called duty.”[139]

On the Southern Plains By this point, Remington had become even more obese, weighing in at 300 pounds, a condition ascribed by some as a compensation for his father having wasted away from tuberculosis. The couple moved to a larger house in May 1909, with a more extensive studio, and as with the move to Endion, Remington hoped to regain his previous physical condition through a regimen of increased exercise. Indeed, he claimed to be extraordinarily happy in the Ridgefield home, which he said was “performing miracles.”[140] Remington received good news when the National Gallery purchased one of his “nocturnes,” Fired On. Shortly after that, however, he suffered from stomach trouble, beginning the week before Christmas in 1909 as he assisted in the closing of an exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery. Feeling “suddenly ill,”[141] he went to the hotel to lie down. The condition became an emergency seemingly overnight, requiring an emergency appendectomy at home. By all accounts, his “obesity complicated the anesthesia and surgery,”[142] leading to peritonitis. The initial 48-hour period indicated that all would be well, and he remained in bed through Christmas Day watching a snowstorm, but he slipped into a coma that afternoon. With him was his wife, brother, and sister-in-law. Prayers were held with the family at the Ridgefield House, and Remington died the following day.

Fired On A funeral service was held at the Universalist Church in Canton, New York, and Remington was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in St. Lawrence County. The obituary cited “general septic peritonitis,”[143] and it somewhat oddly asserted that Remington had traveled to the West for the sake of his health.

Fame and Fortune

Russell created his first large model sculpture in 1904, one among over 100 pieces in a lifetime of work, and over the next two years, Montana grasped the reputation he was coming to enjoy back east and recast him in the role of statewide celebrity. In addition to the paintings and sculptures, readers began warming to his newly-published volumes of Western short stories. In 1907, a group of them were published by The Outing Magazine. A publication highlighting various sports and outdoor themes, Outing was the first publisher of Jack London’s White Fang. The yarns incorporated into Russell’s short stories are many and varied, but all are beautifully written despite his “prairie English.” Among them was the popular Piano Jim and the Impotent Pumpkin Vine. A later volume of short stories eclipsed all that came before - entitled Rawhide Rawlins, they are considered to be among the best of the Western sagas. Before long, Russell enjoyed a reputation as a gifted writer. An invitation to Calgary to exhibit Russell’s works gathered national attention in 1910. Sculpting and writing were forced to take a back seat to painting once more as his first major show to be held in New York City opened in the following year. The one-man exhibition was assembled at the Folsom Galleries before moving on to fulfill the Calgary invitation. Then, it was on to Chicago and an International Art Exhibition in Rome. In time, even the small paintings fetched prices exceeding $10,000. In 1913, Russell produced Wild Horse Hunters, a piece that ignited a great deal of interest. The West had maintained its fascination along the East Coast, and Russell thrived in a group of colleagues that included Edgar Samuel Paxson, Edward “Ed” Borein, and illustrator Willie Crawford. He amassed a pool of collectors, including notables such as William S. Hart, Harry Carey, Will Rogers, and Douglas Fairbanks. As the cinematic world experienced its beginnings, Russell’s pictures were frequently employed as Western backdrops. A second show in London was among Russell’s most important. The exhibition at the Dore Galleries in 1914 was established singlehandedly by Nancy, who maintained her savvy throughout. As she honed her approach and business model, demand and prices went up together. She was both feared and adored on both sides of the Atlantic. To the old-time art dealers along 57th

Street in New York, she was a frequent presence, and the city clique admiringly referred to her as “Nancy the Robber.”[144] Unable to bear children, Nancy and Charles adopted a boy named Jack in 1916. Charles was described as a “doting father,”[145] and he was often seen in Great Falls carrying the boy around and showing him off. Records of the boy’s later life are sparse to nonexistent in the archives of either parent, save the occasional photograph. The most familiar one shows Russell and his infant son on horseback. Russell once quipped that the boy was two months old “when we put our iron on him.”[146] Not surprisingly, this period was among the happiest of his life. Work continued at a rapid pace, and another iconic work emerged in 1918, entitled Piegans. One of many tribal traveling scenes, the migratory theme of the tribe appears in a series of works.

Piegans The following year, the Calgary Stampede featured Russell’s pieces, and the visiting Prince of Wales made a $10,000 purchase that still hangs in Buckingham Palace. Additional exhibitions were assembled the following year in Saskatoon, Boston, Minneapolis, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. After the end of the First World War, art devotees were even more drawn to the bygone West, where the mechanized horrors of the past four years in Europe were not to be found. The popularity of Russell’s short stories, in particular those of Rawhide Rawlins, resurged, and new versions appeared in

print over the next few years. The prestigious Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. held a special exhibition for Russell in 1925, featuring 28 examples of his paintings and sculptures. Charles Marion Russell died on October 24, 1926, in Great Falls, Montana. He had submitted to a surgical procedure for the removal of a goiter, and he likely suffered from congestive heart failure. The official record suggests such a condition, but alternative theories as to the real reason for his death are unspecified. Russell must certainly have seen the end coming, because he became immediately sensitive to his wife’s emotional health. In a telling example of their symbiotic existence, he instructed the doctors not to break the news to her under any circumstances. When they disobeyed his wishes and informed Nancy of his perilous condition, she instructed them that he was not to be told of the dire prognosis. Mitchell lamented that the goiter should have received attention long ago, but Russell admitted to being “scared of those damn surgeons.”[147] She noted that Russell had grown quiet and withdrawn in his final days, as animals often do when approaching the end of life. The state of Montana mourned Charles Russell as a native hero. On the day of his funeral, children were released from school to watch the procession, which included a glass-sided coach pulled by four black horses. All was carried out as Russell had requested. He was insistent in demanding, “I don’t want any automobiles at my funeral.”[148] He also asked to be lowered into the earth by the reins of his horse. For a headstone, Nancy chose a natural boulder, with a notch for “one of Charlie’s feathered friends.”[149] Horace Brewster, Russell’s first trail boss, spoke eloquently to a newspaper of his former employee: “He never swung a mean loop in his life, never done dirt to man or animal, in all the days that he lived.”[150] Such figures had seen from the beginning how difficult surviving on art could be, especially in the West’s rural environment. Attempting it resulted in several mandatory returns to seasonal work on the range before finally attracting sufficient attention to make the professional leap. By the time of Charles Russell’s death, he had completed 4,000 works in all and compiled a large volume of published short stories. These were soon consolidated into one collection entitled Trails Plowed Under. Nancy undertook a campaign to have her husband’s letters published, and she wrote to anyone who might have ever received correspondence from him. The task

was a difficult one, because individuals from nearly every walk of life had heard from Russell on at least one occasion. In the end, Nancy was able to collect approximately 200 letters. A few of them highlight his reverence for the West of his youth, as well as a surprising streak of resentment toward “sod-busters, temperance workers…[and] the damned Chamber of Commerce boosters.”[151] What Nancy could find of these correspondences was assembled and published in a volume entitled Good Medicine. The bulk of his letters came from friends, as Nancy generally handled business exchanges. An additional grouping was published as Charles M. Russell, Word Painter: Letters 1887-1926, with Russell credited as the author. It purports to be the most comprehensive collection of his life’s correspondence ever put together. Included were letters to Nancy, patrons, fellow artists, saloon keepers, and cowboys who had remained friends for life. Despite his generally subjugated ill will for any who would erase the purity of the original West, the letters uniformly reveal a “surprisingly modest man”[152] who generally declined to take himself with too much seriousness. With his affection for the archaic, Russell defied the automotive age by keeping a saddle horse nearby throughout his life. Riding into town on an almost daily basis, many of Great Falls’ citizens greeted him personally. His love of children meant he extended a welcome to all “little folk” for a pleasant round of conversation during his forays into town. Jessie Lincoln Mitchell recalled that it was Nancy who purchased their first automobile and needled him into giving it a try. He would not drive, so she happily took the wheel, while her husband lounged in the back, his feet hanging over the front seat. His most common moniker for the automobile was “stink wagon.”[153] When asked to speak on the subject of artistic expression, Russell spoke the most admiringly of the written word as taking precedence over painting and sculpture. On one such occasion, he observed, “Between the pen and the brush there is little difference, but I believe the man that makes word pictures is the greater.”[154] However, his paintings have stood out and endured through time. Fascination for the West remains in the modern day, and the public estimation of Russell’s quality has not waned. Of the critics and historians who speak of his work, the self-contained nature of every piece still inspires admiration. Each painting depicts a scene which is at the same time reality and fiction, “a

story in itself.”[155] Regardless of his gentle nature, Russell made no attempt to elude the “elemental violence”[156] of the era and locale, filled with conflict and natural brutality as it was, but his gentle nature sought out and found empathetic subjects as well, with scenes that are “quiet, nostalgic and pastoral.”[157] Paralleling the violence are themes of resignation, travel, tenderness, and inner philosophy.

Deer in Forest

When the Land Belonged to God

To the Victor Belong the Spoils The art of Charles Russell has been described as possessing an authentic “rightness,”[158] not only in terms of visual detail, but in the spirit, intention,

and color scheme of the work’s totality. Relying on his extraordinary memory, even beadwork is depicted with geographical and tribal specificity. Once criticized in public for placing Crow style beadwork on the moccasins of a Blackfoot warrior, a nonchalant Russell who knew the models personally simply responded, “Of course. He had a Crow wife.”[159] At the time in which most of his mature works were created, Russell had developed an “observant eye, a feel for animal and human anatomy, a sense of humor, and a flair for portraying action.”[160] When one reads of the maniacal extremes Leonardo Da Vinci undertook to perfect anatomical design, all else suffers by comparison. However, Russell’s mission was not that of Da Vinci, and he did not undertake to perfect the human form as the foreground. Rather, he united foreign cultures, dress, movements, and landscapes in order to create a reality-based and ferocious account of a wild, unfamiliar scene, as did Remington. Drawing lines of ownership between the two American masters continues to the present day. Debates, cheerful and otherwise, often begin with the question, “Are you Remington or Russell people?”[161]

When Cowboys Get in Trouble The premise that underlies the “Western” school of painting as typified by Russell and Remington differs from the European traditions in one distinct aspect. It is one of the few schools that is “defined by a selection of subject

matter rather than a technique.”[162] This would have been less plausible in any of the European trends toward the surreal or veiled subject. The stark reality of the late 19th century Western paintings likely inherited the demands made upon earlier government artists, for whom realism and accuracy were paramount.[163] Although described by one source as a “minor genius in scope of artistic talent,”[164] Russell seemed unperturbed over such judgments, observing that “to have talent is no credit to its owner.”[165] Following her husband’s death, the “naturally gifted”[166] Nancy Russell felt as much drive to promote her husband and his work with the same energy as she had exerted during his life. In a search for a collaborator, she encountered Montana newspaperman Dan Conway, who was in pursuit of a biographical enterprise to revive his sagging spirits and bank account. Conway had long been fascinated by Russell, and Nancy made note of the kindnesses he had bestowed on the artist in his columns with his “sympathetic way.”[167] In short order, Conway was hired to write the definitive Charles Russell biography with the assistance of the strongest primary source from the painter’s life. Beginning in 1932, Nancy and Conway met at the Bull Head Lodge in Glacier Park and sat together for long hours as she reminisced freely about her life with “Charlie” from the first meeting, and whatever she could fill in from the times before. Conway generally remained silent, writing reams of notes. At each break, Nancy went off to rest while Conway went to his room to write. This regimen was repeated through the greater part of the summer, and by early fall, Conway had amassed a manuscript in excess of 80,000 words. Immediately, Nancy forwarded the manuscript to Doubleday, Page & Company, the publishers who had handled Trails Plowed Under, Russell’s story collection. However, the family biography of Charles Russell was summarily rejected, not so much for the subject matter, but for the writing quality. Tearing the text to shreds, they requested that Nancy find a way to fit the larger story into a smaller document. The title of Child of the Frontier sparked no interest within the firm, and in the subsequent session with Conway, the two agreed not to follow Doubleday’s advice. Seeking other publishers with the same fervor, the rejections continued. Scribner offered Child of the Frontier the same “chilly result.”[168] Still unwilling to surrender to Doubleday, the two began to tackle the revisions on their own. In the process, one typewriter was worn out, and they were forced

to buy another. Impatient with what she saw as elitism in the publishing business, Nancy began to coach Conway’s writing despite her negligible education. Her intent was to bring the book down to the comfort zone of the rural reader, and when Conway objected, she dismissed it by remarking, “To hell with the high-brows.”[169] Eventually, they were unable to proceed at all and substituted Good Medicine for the Russell biography. However, she never abandoned the idea. Conway grew increasingly despondent over the disappointment, displaying a worsening case of “chronic and mental fragility.”[170] He exacerbated his downward spiral with a mixture of alcohol and evangelism, turning former allies into enemies at every turn. By association, Nancy was caught up in his status as a pariah to publishers and editors. She remained patient for a time, and according to one author, she “stomached him”[171] far longer than most patrons could be expected to tolerate such behavior. Listening to his ravings for a while, she responded by sending Conway a few dollars here and there before she finally gave up. The heartbroken newspaperman died a few weeks later in an automobile accident. After that, Nancy took up the document by herself and revised Conway’s work posthumously. In the end, her efforts were upstaged by one of Russell’s old acquaintances, Patrick “Tommy” Tucker. The two had ridden the range together, and he published a ghostwritten memoir, Riding the High Country, in 1933. Nancy’s version was far more intimate, emphasizing the tenderness of their life together, while Tucker described “wilder escapades”[172] she could not have known of or admit to. Her attempts at publishing a “proper version” of her husband’s professional life was as its best with the intimacy of the first Christmas in the Cascade shack, and other romantic firsts. Struggling to complete her version, she experienced two heart attacks within a brief period of time, dooming the project. Nonetheless, a few copies of Child of the Frontier still survive. It was devastating for Nancy after four decades serving as her husband’s spin doctor to realize that now she could not care for herself. No longer able to work, she entertained a series of aspiring biographers as substitutes, “shooing away”[173] those with insubstantial credentials or off-putting personalities. On March 9, 1936, she received correspondence from a New York attorney by the name of Maurice Gale. He described a volume of compelling data for

Russell’s life history. Unable to sacrifice the intimacy, all she had left of her marriage, she gave her blessing for him to try, but lamented that she could not assist in any way as she was writing her own book. Gale was never heard from again. Eventually, Frank Dobie and Jim Rankin contacted her. Dobie was a folklorist who would go on to write other works on the topic. Nancy had Rankin figured as a dilettante, later learning that such was not the case. However, he would not disclose his background to her, or admit to ever having met Russell. He claimed to be a biographer by trade, but it was soon discovered that he had never written anything. Still, he began the work, attempting to catalogue every work of art. Such a task was daunting since no one among them knew where much of it was. A portfolio of 4,000 works was spread about between various cowboys, shopkeepers, and former prostitutes (Russell had apparently donated pieces to a bordello that claimed to need it for décor). Owners included Douglas Fairbanks, Will Rogers, and Edward Doheny. In the end, Dobie was never able to bring himself to write the book. As a professor with an institutional reputation to uphold, much of the document’s material was deemed “too steamy.”[174] Rankin’s work remained equally incomplete, but his notes abound. Fortunately, Nancy was an infamous hoarder and had nearly everything else required, but she was critically ill from 1937 through the following three years, so she could no longer participate. She died in a Pasadena hospital in 1940 and was returned to Great Falls for interment. The couple had built a new home in Southern California, but they had not lived long enough to spend time together there. The studio cabin in Great Falls had become the C. M. Russell Museum a decade earlier, and it was already regularly open to the public. The dimensions of the exhibit there covered an entire city block, with galleries and displays totaling 13,000 items. Included was an enormous collection of firearms, indicative of the types used in the paintings. Numerous personal objects and artifacts can still be seen there as well. It was Will Rogers who took up the banner for Nancy Russell and inspired Amon Carter to begin collecting and exhibiting Russell’s art years after his death. In 1952, the entire Russell

inventory of the infamous Mint Saloon was purchased, and over time, a single collection of 400 pieces was amassed.

Rogers Tributes to the great Montana artist abound. In addition to the Great Falls Museum, major collections of Russell works can be found in the Montana Historical Society, the Helena Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, two major museums in Fort Worth, Texas, the Amon Carter and the Sid Richardson, the R.W. Norton Art Gallery of Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, Oklahoma. A mural of Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians can be seen at the Helena State Capitol Building. A high school built on the north side of the Missouri River in St. Louis honors Russell’s name, and he has been inducted into the St. Louis Hall of

Fame. His paintings have been employed as backdrops in more modern films such as How the West Was Won, starring James Stewart, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck. Russell is honored in the Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol Building of Washington, D.C., along with Montana’s Jeannette Rankin, the first female member of Congress in the nation’s history. For Supremacy, painted before the turn of the century, was eventually sold at auction for a price of over $2 million and branded as “a great and unique American treasure.”[175] In 2005, that mark was far exceeded by the sale of Piegans, painted in the last year of the First World War, for $5.5 million. In later years, Russell received a Doctor of Laws degree from the State University of Montana. In his acceptance speech, he clearly inferred that the classroom and textbook are not the only sources of enlightenment or excellence, remarking, “Nature has been my teacher; I’ll leave it you whether she was a good one or not.”[176] Following the occasion, a favorite quip became familiar among his friends: “If you ever get sick, you know I’m Doctor Russell.”[177]

For Supremacy In a few cases throughout history, practitioners of various expressions of art have become notable due to their lack of formal training or proximity to the

international mainstream. Such is the case with Charles Marion Russell. Despite not studying past European work, his American works emerged with an individuality that reflects the land and people he personally experienced over the course of his life. With little exposure to art trends that took the viewer away from starkly clear likenesses into semi-recognizable and abstract forms, Russell was both an accuracy-oriented illustrator and imaginative painter of historical fiction. Art Contrarian describes the “untutored natural”[178] as possessing a “good eye for color and the atmosphere of his settings.”[179] From his wife and close friends to casual acquaintances, everyone agreed that Russell was a “lover of all things living,”[180] and a “true gentleman,”[181] and this universal affection for life encompassed the vast land that evoked his best artistic impulses. He is said to have painted the West “with an almost mythical passion of lost love.”[182] Such passion increased as Russell watched the region’s wilderness shrink and modernize. In Gene Fowler’s work on Russell and Remington, he echoed an old frontier sentiment spoken on behalf of the frontier itself: “Man may lose a sweetheart, but he don’t forget her.” In a retort to attempt to categorize Russell as an artist alongside other masters of the art world, Will Rogers cautioned against any form of labeling or dismissal of Russell’s importance, saying, “He wasn’t just another artist. He wasn’t just another anything.”[183]

Remington’s Legacy

A 1940 commemorative stamp In his relatively short life and career, Remington created 3,000 drawings and paintings, 22 bronze sculptures, two novels (one of which was adapted for theater), 100 magazine articles, and numerous stories. The entire theme of his professional life was based on a childhood love of horses, the outdoors, and his father’s war tales from his time in the military. In the years following his death, not a single gallery in the Western Hemisphere would have turned down the opportunity to exhibit his work. Even the Met came around eventually despite an awkward start. In 1911, it was given On the Southern Plains as a gift, but the work was immediately buried away in the museum vault, “to the chagrin of the donors.”[184]

The Frederic Remington Museum of Art has occupied the estate of Eva Remington since 1923, and it still serves the community of Ogdensburg at 303 Washington Street. The collection of paintings, illustrations, and bronze statuettes is an appropriately sizeable and important one. During the Great Depression, the appeal of American art suffered, but it rebounded in the 1940s, and the country’s fascination with cowboys has persisted. Many of Remington’s works are still iconic to art fans, and epic western movies often borrow Remington backdrops. Remington’s work inspired the 1949 John Ford film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. No end of scholarly analysis is available for Remington fans, and among the most illuminating is the study of the artist’s night effects by Nancy K. Anderson, head of American and British paintings for the National Gallery of Art. Anderson has received several Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. A Helen Card quote noted that “Subject was everything to Remington,”[185] but one might suggest that “the moment” is of equal importance to those viewing Remington’s works. Peter H. Hassrick of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West cited a difficulty with overemphasizing the subject. He suggested that Remington’s accomplishments as a painter have been “subverted”[186] by the public’s expectations of him as a “historical realist.”[187] He added that if viewers shifted their attention from the subject matter to Remington’s use of “daring compositions,”[188] it would rescue the artist from “semi-artistic limbo,”[189] where illustrators and painters enjoy a separate status. Among the more informative Remington biographies is the one written by Peggy and Harold Samuels. A “fact-filled biography,”[190] the authors offered a balanced evaluation of the artist and individual. In the personal realm, much is made of his inability to control his eating and drinking, his “large need for close and loyal friends,”[191] and occasional infidelities. Reviewer Richard W. Etulain inferred that the Samuels’ work was too thorough in this regard, offering more detail than is wanted or needed. As many separate Richard Wagner’s music from the antisemitic views he held in life, so have Remington admirers, casting him as a “pioneer American artist, able to reveal the national personality.”[192] Others maintain that his revulsion for those who aren’t white have remained fresh in the minds of art history, insisting that he is the “worst artist in our history to achieve national

stature.”[193] Aesthetically described by a rapt public as the “champion of honest popular art,”[194] he is equally reviled as a racist bigot practicing the identical expansionist imperialism from which the original colonists fled. The extreme Americanism found in his paintings, bronzes, and stories promote both the nobility of the nation’s development and its abuses. The vigor and “great physical presence”[195] of his semi-fantastical Western scenes can be countered by his dark impulses. Remington critics cite his racist letter when arguing against including him in the pantheon of American artists. G. Edward White reprinted the offending letter in The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience in 1968, suggesting that no sympathy is either merited or forthcoming, whatever the historical timeframe. In December 2017, the Met at last afforded Remington’s work a full exhibition. He was promoted as a “chronicler par excellence,”[196] a description that still smacks of backhanded praise. In the same year, one of his most impressive bronze sculptures, Off the Range (Coming Through the Rye), was purchased at Christie’s in New York for over $11 million.

Off the Range (Coming Through the Rye)

At some point, every author dealing with Western artists is likely to offer a comparison between Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, two giants in the field. Inevitably, it boils down to a characterization of the “Hail fellow well met”[197] Remington against the “Mr. Congeniality and soulpainting Russell,”[198] who lived in the West and loved everything in and about it. Critics often consider Remington to be the better artist in terms of technical ability, but at times some note that he “habitually got and gave the right words, but less frequently the right tune.”[199] Where Remington is characterized as one who longed for the “good old days,” Russell often depicted the deep loss of the Native American’s natural existence in a lethal environment. To Remington critics, he may have painted beauty, but his works weren’t as poetic as Russell’s. In a sense, Remington’s work represented Manifest Destiny, while Russell’s paintings mourned the damage done by America’s westward expansion. Of course, some point out that Russell was a product of Manifest Destiny, and that he also practiced the trumpeting of white superiority in his art. Apart from all other social considerations, the public’s response over the last 130 years is proof that the works of Frederic Remington command attention and deliver an impactful visceral message. Replete with a rugged nostalgia and a salute to wilderness nobility worthy of Western Civilization’s ancient Greek and Roman heritage, technical classifications of illustrator and originalist fall away. In a final confession that he had at times employed photography as a model, Remington insisted that an artist must nevertheless be more knowledgeable and more imaginative than the camera, ably laying the term “chronicler” to rest. Remington was anything but a pure commercialist or literalist, and he understood that art relied upon the artist’s energy and attention. As he so aptly put it, “Art is a she-devil of a mistress.”[200]

The Sentinel (1889)

Fight for the Waterhole

The Right of the Road (1900)

His First Lesson (1903)

A Cold Morning on the Range (circa 1904)

The Smoke Signal (1905)

A Taint on the Wind (1906)

Shotgun Hospitality (1908)

Buffalo Runners-Big Horn Basin (1909)

Online Resources

Other books about 19th century American history by Charles River Editors Other books about Charles Marion Russell on Amazon Other books about Remington on Amazon

Further Reading

American Art News, Frederick Remington, Vol. 18 No. 12 (Jan.1, 1910) American Masters, Frederick Remington: The Truth of Other Days. About Frederic Remington, PBS.org, Feb. 17, 2003 – www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/freeric-remington-about-fredericremington/688/ Anderson, Nancy K., Frederick Remington: The Color of Night, National Gallery of Art Staff, Nemerov, Sharpe, 2003 Art Net.com, Frederic Remington (American, 1861-1909) – www.artnet.com/artists/frederic-remington Art Contrarian, Charles M. Russell, Painter of Old Montana, Thursday, September 19, 2019 – www.artcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/09/Charles-mrussell-painter-of-old-montana.html Art Discovery, Packet #12 – Charles Russell Western Artist – www.artdiscovery.info/notations/notations-2/packet-12/ Bales, Bob, Charles M. Russell, The Cowboy Artist, The Traveling Fool, Oct. 8, 2019 – www.thetravelingfool.com/charles-m-russell-the-cowboy-artist/ Bauman Rare Books, Sundown Leflare, Frederic Remington – www.baumanbooks.com/rare-boioks/remington-frederic-remington-sundownleflare/108496.aspx Blumberg, Naomi, Frederic Remington, American artist, Encyclopaedia Britannica – www.britannica.com/biography/Frederic_Remington Bold, Christine, How the Western Ends: Fennimore Cooper to Frederic Remington, Western American Literature, Vol. 17 no. 2 (Summer 1982) Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Frederic Remington, 1861-1909 – www.centerofthewest.org/explore/western-art/research/frederic-remington Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Charles M. Russell, 1864-1926 – www.centerofthewest.org/explore/wwestern-art/research/charles-m-russell/ CowboyWay, Charles Russell Art Prints – www.cowboyway.com/CharlesRussell.htm

Dear, Elizabeth A., Stanley, David, Charlie Russell and Glacier Park, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 63 No. 2 (Summer 2013) Dippie, Brian W., ‘I Want It Real Bad’: The Charles M. Russell-Malcolm McKay collaboration, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 54 No. 2 (Summer, 2004) Montana Historical Society pp 22-35 Dippie, Brian W., Arizona and the West, A Dedication to the Memory of Charles M. Russell, 1864-1926, Vol. 27 no. 3 (Autumn, 1985) Journal of the Southwest Delabono, Barney, Review of Peter H. Hassrick’s Frederic Remington, The Southwest Historical Quarterly, Vol. 77, no. 4 (April 1974) Texas State Historical Association Dippie, Brian W., Reflections on a Reputation: The Remington Raisonné, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 47 No. 2 (Summer 1997) Montana Historical Society Dobie, J. Frank, Tracks of Frederick Remington, Southwest Review, Vol. 46 No. 4 (Autumn 1961, Southern Methodist University Encyclopedia.com, Frederic Remington – www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-autobiographies/frederic-remington Encyclopedia.org, Charles Marion Russell – www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-artbiographies/Chares-m-russell Ere Now.Net, Biographies and Memoirs, Chapter Five, Frederic Remington – www.erenow.net/biographies/brave-comparisons-portrait-in-history/6.php Etulain, Richard W., Review of Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels, Frederic Remington: A Biography, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 33 no. 3 (Summer 1983) Montana Historical Society Fowler, Gene, Remington and Russell, Shoptalk – www.shoptalkmagazine.com/2018/02/09/remington-and-russell/ Historic Artists’ Home Studios, C.M. Russell Museum – www.artistshomes.org/site/cm-russell-museum

Legends of America, Charles M. Russell – The Cowboy Artist – www. Legendsofamerica.com/ah-charlesrussell/ MacKay, Malcolm S., Cow Range and Hunting Trail, Stoneydale Publishing Company – www.stoneydale.com/product_infophp?products_id=377 Nemerov, Alex, Frederic Remington: Within and Without the Past, American Art, Vol. 5 No. ½ (Winter-Spring 1991) University of Chicago Press O’Connor, William, Artist of the Month: Frederic Remington, Dec. 1, 2017, - MC, Muddy Colors – www.muddycolors.com/2017/12/artist-of-the-monthfrederic-remington/ Pleasants, Julian M., Frederic Remington in Florida, The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 56 No. 1 (July 1977) Florida Historical Society Prabook.com, Frederic Sackrider Remington – www.prabook.com/frederic.remington/1082754 Renner, F. G., Rangeland Rembrandt: The Incomparable Charles Russell Marion Russell, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 7 No. 4 (October, 1957), Montana Historical Society, pp15-28 Renner, Ginger K., Charlie and the Ladies in His Life, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 34 no. 3, Charles M. Russell: A Special Issue (Summer, 1984) Samuels, Peggy, Samuels, Harold, Review of Brian W. Dippie’s Remington and Russell, The Southwest Historical Quarterly, Vol. 87 No. 1 (July 1983) Texas State Historical Association Sid Richardson Museum, Frederic Remington – www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org/gallery.php/art/remington Sweeney, J. Gray, Racism, Nationalism, and Nostalgia in Cowboy Art, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 15 No. 1, Manifest Destiny, Oxford University Press Swift Papers, Frederic Remington – www.swiftpapers.com/biographies/Frederic-Remington-29283.html Taliaferro, John, The Curse of the Buffalo Skull, Seventy Years on the Trail of a Charles. M. Russell Biography, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 46 No. 2 (Summer, 1996) pp 2-17

The Met 150, Pony Tracks, 1895 – www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/738758 Thompson, Gerald, Review of Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels Frederick Remington, A Biography, University of Toledo – www.academic.oup.com/ah/article-abstract/69/4/1003/763997? redirectedFrom=fulltext Tolles, Thayer, The American Wing, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Frederic Remington (1861-1909) – www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/remi/had_remi.htm Toole, K. Ross, Beloved Westerner: An Introduction, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 8 no. 4, Charles M. Russell: Special Edition (Autumn, 1958) Top of Art, Charles Marion Russell, Painting Reproductions Gallery 1of 2 – www.topofart.com/artists/Charles-Russell/ Women’s History Matters, Behind Every Man: Nancy Cooper Russell, March 18, 2014 – www.montanawomenshistory.org/behind-every-man-nancycooper-russell/

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[1]

Art Net.com, Frederic Remington (American, 1861-1909) – www.artnet.com/artits/frederic-remington/ Naomi Blumberg, Frederic Remington, American artist, Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Frederic-Remington [3] Art Net.com [4] Frederic Remington.org, Frederick Sackrider Remington – www.frederic-remington.org [5] Frederic Remington.org [6] Thayer Tolles, The American Wing, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Frederic Remington (1861-1909) – www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/remi/hd_remi.htm [7] Thayer Tolles [8] Thayer Tolles [9] Encyclopedia.com, Frederic Remington, American Artist, 1861-1809 – www.hoocher.com/Frederic_Remington/Frederic_Remington.htm [10] Encyclopedia.com, Frederic Remington [11] Paul Cool, Did Remington Capture Clanton’s Last Breath? True West Magazine, June, 2016 – www.truewestmagazine.com/article/did-remington-capture-clantons-last-breath/ [12] Paul Cool [13] Paul Cool [14] Thayer Tolles [15] Ere Now.net, Biographies & Memoirs, Chapter Five, Frederic Remington – www.erenow.net/biographies/brave-comparisons-portraits-in-history/6.php [16] Ere Now.net [17] J. Frank Dobie, Tracks of Frederic Remington, Southwest Review, Volume 46 No. 4 (Autumn 1961), Southern Methodist University [18] Thayer Tolles [19] Ere Now.net, Biographies & Memoirs, Chapter Five, Frederic Remington – www.erenow.net/biographies/brave-comparisons-portrait-in-history/6.php [20] Shannon J. Hatfield, Remington-Art.com – www.remington-art.com/remington%20biography.htm [21] Ere Now. net [22] Thayer Tolles [23] J. Frank Dobie [24] Ginger K. Renner, Charlie and the Ladies in His Life, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 34 No. 3, Charles M. Russell: A Special Issue (Summer, 1984) [25] Ginger K. Renner [26] F.G. Renner, Rangeland Rembrandt: The Incomparable Charles Marion Russell, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 7 no. 4 (Oct., 1957), Montana Historical Society, pp15-28 [2]

[27]

F.G. Renner

[28]

John Taliaferro, The Curse of the Buffalo Skull, Seventy Years on the Trail of a Charles. M. Russell Biography, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 46 No. 2 (Summer, 1996) pp 2-17 [29] Top of Art, Charles Marion Russell Painting Reproductions, Gallery 1 of 2 – www.topofart.com/artists/Charles-Russell/ [30] F.G. Renner [31] F.G. Renner [32] Painting Mania, Piegans – www.paintingmania.com/piegans-156_10769.html [33] F.G. Renner [34] F.G. Renner [35] F.G. Renner [36] Painting Mania [37] Gene Fowler, Remington and Russell, Shoptalk – www.shoptalkmagazine/.com/2018/02/09/remington-and-russell/ [38] Ginger K. Renner [39] Ginger K. Renner [40] Ginger K. Renner [41] F.G. Renner [42] Cherundolo, AccuWeather, Jan. 30, 2012 – www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/montanaschinook-winds-allow-u-1/60870 [43] F.G. Renner [44] Ere Now.net [45] Ere Now.net [46] Shannon J. Hatfield [47] Ere Now.net [48] Ere Now.net [49] Military Wiki, Frederic Remington – www.military.wikia.org/wiki/Frederic_Remington [50] Ere Now.net [51] J. Frank Dobie [52] Ere Now.net [53] Ere Now.net [54] Shannon J. Hatfield [55] Ere Now.net [56] Ere Now.net [57] Thayer Tolles [58] Thayer Tolles [59] Bartleby.com, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, Theodore Roosevelt – www.bartleby.com/54/ [60] Thayer Tolles [61] Gene Fowler [62] Gene Fowler [63] Art Discovery, Packet #12, Charles Russell Western Content – www.artdiscovery.com.info/notations/notation-2/packet-12/

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Art Discovery F.G. Renner [66] Ginger K. Renner [67] Ginger K. Renner [68] Ginger K. Renner [69] Ginger K. Renner [70] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [71] Malcolm S. MacKay, Cow Range and Hunting Trail, Stoneydale Publishing Company – www.stoneydale.com/product_infophp?products_id=377 [72] Brian W. Dippie, ‘I Want It Real Bad’: The Charles M. Russell, Malcolm MacKay Collaboration, Montana” The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 54 No. 2 (Summer, 2004), Montana Historical Society, pp32-35 [73] Brian W. Dippie, Montana [74] Brian W. Dippie, Montana [75] Brian W. Dippie, Montana [76] Painting Mania, Piegans – www.paintingmania.com/piegans-156-10769.html [77] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell, C.M. Russell, The White Indian, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 10 No. 1 (Winter, 1960) [78] Art Discovery [79] Women’s History Matters, Behind Every Man: Nancy Cooper Russell, March 18, 2014 – www.montanawomenshistory.org/behind-every-man-nancy-cooper-cooper-russell/ [80] Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Charles M. Russell, 1864-1926 – www.centerofthewest.org/explore/western-art/research/charles-m-russell/ [81] Buffalo Bill Center of the West [82] Buffalo Bill Center of the West [83] Women’s History Matters [84] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [85] Encyclopedia.c0mj, McClure’s Magazine, Oct. 16, 2019 – www.encyclopedia.com/history/culturemagazines/mcclures-magazine [86] Brian W. Dippie, Montana [87] Brian W. Dippie, Arizona and the West [88] Elizabeth Dear, David Stanley, Charlie Russell and Glacier Park, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 63 No. 2 (Summer 2013) [89] Elizabeth Dear, David Stanley [90] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [91] F.G. Renner [92] Gene Fowler [93] Gene Fowler [94] Buffalo Bill Center [95] American Art News, Frederic Remington, Vol. 8 No. 12 (Jan. 1, 1910) [96] Thayer Tolles [97] Swift Papers, Frederic Remington – swiftpapers.com/biographies/Frederic-Remington-29283.html [98] American Art News [65]

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Brian W. Dippie, Reflections on a Reputation: The Remington Raisonné, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 47 No. 2 (Summer 1997) Montana Historical Society [100] Brian W. Dippie [101] Saul Jay Singer, Jewish Press.com [102] Brian W. Dippie [103] Saul Jay Singer, Jewish Press.com [104] Saul Jay Singer, Jewish Press.com [105] Saul Jay Singer, Jewish Press.com [106] Ere Now.net [107] Ere Now.net [108] The Met 150, Pony Tracks, 1895 – www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/753758 [109] Ere Now.net [110] Ere Now.net [111] Christine Bold, How the Western Ends: Fennimore Cooper to Frederic Remington, Western American Literature, Vol. 17 No. 2 (Summer 1982) [112] Christine Bold [113] Bauman Rare Books, Sundown Leflare, Frederic Remington – www.baumanbooks.com/rarebooks/remington-frederic/sundown-leflare/108496.aspx [114] Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Frederic Remington, 1861-1909 – www.centerofthewest.org/explore/western-art/research/frederic-remington/ [115] Thayer Tolles [116] Encyclopedia.com [117] Julian M. Pleasants, Frederic Remington in Florida, The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 56 No. 1 (July 1977), Florida Historical Society [118] Julian M. Pleasants [119] Julian M. Pleasants [120] Julian M. Pleasants [121] Julian M. Pleasants [122] Julian M. Pleasants [123] Julian M. Pleasants [124] Julian M. Pleasants [125] Ere Now.net [126] Ere Now.net [127] Thayer Tolles [128] Hoocher.com, Frederic Remington, American Artist, 1861-1909 – www.hoocher.com/Frederic_Remington/Frderic_Remington.htm [129] Hoocher.com [130] Hoocher.com [131] Encyclopedia.com [132] Prabook.com, Frederic Sackrider Remington – www.prabook.com/frederic.remington/1082754 [133] Hoocher.com [134] MUSE, John W. Bailey, Review of Frederic Remington’s The Way of an Indian, Carthage College, Western American Literature, University of Nebraska Press, Vol. 13, No. 3, Fall 1978 – www.muse.jhu.edu/article/529414/pdf

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Thayer Tolles American Masters, Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days, About Frederic Remington, Feb. 17, 2003 – www.pgs.org/wnet/americanmasters/frederic-remington-about-frederic-remington [137] Nancy K. Anderson, Frederic Remington: The Color of Night, National Gallery Art Staff, published Nemerov, Sharpe, 2003 [138] Nancy K. Anderson [139] Met 150 [140] Ere Now.net [141] American Art News [142] Frederic-Remington.org, Biography of Frederic Remington – www.fredericremington.org/biography.html/ [143] American Art News [144] F.G. Renner [145] Legends of America, Charles M. Russell – The Cowboy Artist – www.legendsofamerica.com/ahcharlesrussell/ [146] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [147] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [148] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [149] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [150] Painting Mania [151] F.G. Renner [152] Sid Richardson Museum, Charles M. Russell – www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org/gallery.php/art/russell [153] Jessie Lincoln Mitchell [154] Buffalo Bill Center [155] F.G. Renner [156] F.G. Renner [157] F.G. Renner [158] F.G. Renner [159] F.G. Renner [160] Sid Richardson Museum [161] Gene Fowler [162] Gene Fowler [163] Art Discovery [164] Art Discovery [165] Art discovery [166] Gene Fowler [167] John Taliaferro, The Curse of the Buffalo Skull, Seventy Years on the Trail of Charles m. Russell’s Biography, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 46 no. 2 (Summer 1996) pp2-17 [168] John Taliaferro [169] John Taliaferro [170] John Taliaferro [171] John Taliaferro [136]

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John Taliaferro John Taliaferro [174] John Taliaferro [175] Cowboy Way, Charles Russell Art Prints – www.cowboyway.com/CharlesRussell.htm [176] Historic Artists’ Home Studios, C. M. Russell Museum – www.artistshomes.org/site/cm-russellmuseum [177] Brian W. Dippie, Arizona and the West [178] Art Contrarian, Charles M. Russell, Painter of Old Montana, Thursday, September 19, 2019 – www.artcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/09/Charles-m-russell-painter-of-old-montana.html [179] Art Contrarian [180] Top of Art, Charles Marion Russell [181] Top of Art, Charles Marion Russell [182] Gene Fowler [183] F.G. Renner [184] Peter Hassrick, Frederic Remington The Painter: A Historiographical Sketch, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 46 No. 2 (Summer 1966) [185] J. Frank Dobie [186] Peter H. Hassrick, Finding the Real Frederic Remington, Buffalo Bill Center of the West – www.centerofthewest.org/2018/points-west-finding-real-frederic-remington/ [187] Peter H. Hassrick [188] Peter H. Hassrick [189] Barney Delabono, Review of Peter H. Hassrick’s Frederic Remington, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 77 No. 4 (April 1974) Texas State Historical Association [190] Richard W. Etulain, Review of Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels, Frederic Remington: A Biography, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 33 No. 3 (Summer 1983), Montana Historical Society [191] Richard. W. Etulain [192] Peter H. Hassrick, Montana: The Magazine of Western History [193] Peter H. Hassrick [194] Peter H. Hassrick [195] Peter H. Hassrick [196] William O’Connor, MC, Muddy Colors, Artist of the Month: Frederic Remington, Dec. 9, 2017 – www.muddycolors.com/2017/12/artist-of-the-month-frederick-remington/ [197] Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels, Review of Brian Dippie’s Remington and Russell, The Southwest Historical Quarterly, Vol. 87 No. 1 (July 1983) Texas State Historical Association [198] Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels [199] J. Frank Dobie [200] Prabook.com [173]