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57
Charles Marion Russell
(1864-1926)
"At the End of the Rope," 1919
Gouache, watercolor, and pencil on illustration board
Signed, dated, and with the artist's skull device lower left: C.M. Russell / 1919
13.25" H x 19.5" W
-
Provenance:
The Artist's Estate, Great Falls, MT
Nancy Russell, wife of the artist, Great Falls, MT
C.R. Smith, President of American Airlines, acquired from the above, May 1941
Homer E. Britzman, CO and Beverly Hills, CA, 1941
Charles S. Jones, Walter V. Dobbs, and Wallace K. Downey (who transferred his interest to Earl C. Adams, attorney for the Russell estate, San Marino, CA)
Estate of Homer E. Britzman, CO and Beverly Hills, 1953
Mrs. Homer E. Britzman, by inheritance from the above
Hammer Galleries, New York, NY, (Armand and Victor Hammer acquired partial ownership from the above), 1957, no. 17717-46
Private Collection, Healdsburg, CA, circa 1959, from the above
By family descent -
Exhibited:
Los Angeles, CA, Department of Municipal Art, City Hall, Tower Gallery; San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor; Helena, Montana, Historical Society of Montana; Great Falls, Montana, The Trigg - C.M. Russell Foundation, "Charles M. Russell," travelling exhibition, August 1957-February 1958, no. 46
Calgary, Canada, Western Canada Art Circuit, The Coste House, Calgary Allied Arts Council, n.d. -
Literature:
"Antiques," October 1959, LXXVI (4), p. 275, illustrated in an advertisement for Hammer Galleries
"Charles M. Russell, A Catalogue Raisonné," online only, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, reference #CR.UNL.32
Other notes:
Charles Marion Russell is considered one of the most significant artists of the American West. Working in a variety of mediums, Russell focused on dynamic narrative compositions featuring the life of the working cowboy and conflict between cowboy versus Indian and man versus beast. He is celebrated today for his cowboy humor both in various mediums of painting, works on paper, bronzes, and in many illustrated letters, short stories and lively correspondence.
Russell was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1864 into a wealthy family that owned coal mines and the company Oak Hill Firebrick and Tile Works involved in brick and tile manufacturing. His great grandfather had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri Territory. While expectations were that Russell would take over the family businesses eventually, instead, Russell was more interested in listening to his grandmother, Lucy Bent Russell, tell stories of the adventures of her brothers, the Bent Boys, who were famous frontier adventurers. Russell also spent time down at the docks along the Mississippi River listening to stories from the explorers and fur traders that passed through town. Through these experiences, Russell developed a keen interest in becoming a cowboy, and to that end became a proficient rider and adopted the ways and manners of his western heroes. Art also interested Russell from a young age. He started making models out of beeswax, given to him by a family friend, but was also constantly sketching in his schoolbooks. His principal subjects were cowboys and Indians. At age 12, in 1876, enrolled in a life-drawing class at Washington University in St. Louis.
Russell ran away to Montana at age 14 but his family caught up to him and sent him to Burlingame Military Academy in New Jersey, where he lasted for just a few months. In 1880, at age 18, Russell set out again for Montana, this time with his family's blessing. He arrived in Helena, and a family friend, Willis L.W. 'Pike' Miller, gave him a job as a sheep herder. The work was not interesting to Russell and his sheep herding tenure was short lived. Russell met Jake Hoover, a trapper and hunter, who taught him about animal behavior and how to trap in the wild. After about two years in Montana, Russell went to work as a night herder.
During this early period in Montana, Russell constantly sketched during his off hours and slowly developed a local reputation as an artist. In 1885, James Shelton, a saloon owner in Utica, Montana, commissioned Russell to paint a picture for his bar, and gave Russell room to paint in the back of the saloon, as he did not have a studio. An early exhibition of an oil painting, Breaking Camp (Amon Carter Museum collection), occurred in 1886 at the St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall Association Third Annual Exhibition in the 'Amateur Department'. Russell exhibited several works at Calkins & Featherly in Helena in 1887. In 1888, one of Russell's sketches appeared in Harper's Weekly, his first paid illustration and his first national exposure as an illustrator. In the winter of 1888 to 1889, Russell lived with the Blood Indians in Alberta, Canada.
By 1892, Russell was a full-time and popular painter in Montana, and he occasionally contributed illustrations for books or magazine stories published nationally. In 1893, Russell visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he had several paintings on view in the Montana Pavilion. That same year he decided to turn to painting full time, leaving his work as a cowboy behind.
Friendly and without a strong business sense, Russell in this period would often give his sketches and paintings to friends and, at times, would paint a commission for the local saloon in exchange for bar debts. While he was becoming famous, Russell was not particularly financially successful. That changed after Russell married Nancy Cooper on September 9, 1896. The couple moved to Great Falls, and Nancy became Russell's business manager. Because of Nancy's business prowess, she helped Russell continue to build his reputation and ended his practice of giving away his art. Instead, she facilitated sales at increasingly strong prices. In 1898, Russell cast his first bronzes at the Roman Bronze Works foundry in New York. A year later, in 1899, Russell published Pen Sketches, a collection of prints of cowboy life. Both endeavors were successful.
By 1903, Russell had a national reputation. The couple built a log-cabin studio in Great Falls that Russell decorated with a collection of artifacts and memorabilia from his cowboy days. That winter, the couple went to New York to promote his first eastern art exhibition via St. Louis, where Russell had several paintings in the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition. This initial exhibition in New York was a failure and no paintings sold. In 1904, Russell tried showing in New York again, and this time he not only sold several paintings, but started a business relationship with Tiffany & Co. who started to sell the artist's small bronzes. While in New York, Russell also received illustration commissions.
Between 1909 and 1914, Russell was exhibiting nationally and internationally including at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle (1909), his first one-person show at the Folsom Gallery in New York (1911), and at the Dore Galleries in London (1914) where he sold a painting to the Prince of Wales. In 1911, he received a commission from the State of Montana for a mural for the Montana House of Representatives that depicts Lewis and Clark Meeting the Salish Indians at Ross' Hole (1912).
Russell was at the height of his career by 1915, and was in huge demand and commanded large prices for his work. Despite, this success, however, Russell maintained the character and charm of a friendly cowboy. By 1920, Russell's health had started to weaken, and he began to winter in California to escape the harsh Montana climate. Russell died of a heart attack in Great Falls in 1926 at age 62.
"At the End of the Rope," painted in 1919, embodies the subject and action of Russell's most beloved works, executed at the height of his career with impeccable detail and fidelity of form, and a first-hand knowledge of calf roping. Russell grounds the mounted cowboy and roped calf on a dusty plain and focuses all of the viewer's attention on the central roping action by backing the scene with a horizon band of painterly and atmospheric clouds or dust. Utilizing an effective combination of gouache, watercolor and pencil, Russell captures fine details in the cowboy and his Western wear, the horse and its Western tacking, and the calf's twisted body as it is pulled airborne by the taut rope. Russell creates palpable drama and paints with pure authenticity in "At the End of the Rope." The painting's exciting narrative and exacting detail exhibits a culmination of the artist's many years as a working American cowboy and his lifelong and deep immersion in its culture. -
Condition: Overall good appearance. Occasional scattered and very unobtrusive pinpoint-sized foxmarks concentrated primarily in the sky at left. One rice-sized area of slight surface skinning at the tip of the lower left corner. A few minute nicks or tiny surface abrasions in places at the extreme edges, attendant with previous matting or framing. Remains of paper and old glue from previous mounting, as well as the remains of two old linen hinges, at the verso of the illustration board's upper corners. The work is loose, cradled by an acid-free mat for display purposes.
Framed under glass: 26.5" H x 32" W x 1.5" D
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