Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., displays sculptures of people important to each of the 50 states. Charles M. Russell represents the state of Montana and is the only artist in the hall’s collection.
At the age of 16, Russell moved from St. Louis to Montana, where he began working as a wrangler and sheep herder. Working and sketching the activities of his fellow cowboys, he became known as the “Cowboy Artist.” In 1893, he retired as a cowpoke to devote himself to painting.
Deer at Lake McDonald, 1908, oil on canvas, 22¾ x 28¾ in. The Petrie Collection.
In 1915, he and his wife Nancy visited the high country of what is now Glacier National Park in Montana and purchased land where they built a lodge on Lake McDonald. They summered there for the next several decades.
Bull Head Lodge was named after Russell’s bison head cipher with which he signed his work and etched into the concrete of the cabin’s fireplace surrounding it. The cabin was invisible from the lake and its location is marked only by a bison skull placed on the shore.
The Price of His Hide, 1915, oil on canvas. The Petrie Collection.
Bruin Not Bunny Turned the Leaders, 1924, oil on canvas, 31¼ x 433⁄8 in. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK.
Storm Over Lake McDonald, 1906, watercolor on paper. C.M. Russell Museum.
The Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has assembled paintings and artifacts from Russell’s years at Bull Head Lodge for the exhibition Russell’s Retreat: Summers at Glacier National Park, which runs through April 2027. The museum notes, “The exhibition demonstrates how Russell moved from being a painter of Western action to an artist shaped by Montana’s woods and lakes. What is now known as Glacier National Park was once a place of refuge and serenity for Charles M. Russell, whose relationship to this landscape is revealed in the works on view.”
Charles and Nancy Russell on the Steps at Bull Head Lodge, photographer unknown, 1907. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK, TU2009.39.275.14a-b.
Scott Winterrowd, the museum’s director, describes an unusual and important watercolor in the exhibition. “A work Russell made in 1906, the year of Bull Head Lodge’s construction, stands out as one of the few pure landscape subjects Russell painted. In it are glimpses of how the environment of Lake McDonald would leave a lasting mark on Russell’s artistic vision,” Winterrowd says. “Although Russell would complain that he could not properly capture the lake in paint, in Storm Over Lake McDonald he succeeds in communicating the power of a small storm through the turbulent waves, the aqua hue of the glaciated water set before the distant peaks. Glacier’s landscape—with its vast distances, shifting light and glacial blues—reshaped his palette and atmosphere across his artmaking, imbuing later works with a similar, cooler tonal quality.”
Deer in the Dell, 1909, watercolor and gouache on paper, 21 x 16¼ in. The Petrie Collection.
His paintings are primarily of its fauna as seen in Deer at Lake McDonald, an oil from 1908, and Deer in the Dell, a watercolor from 1909.
Later in his life he returned to the action of his early cowboy paintings in his large oil Bruin Not Bunny Turned the Leaders.A coach has a catastrophic crash as the lead horses in the team pulling it are startled not by the rabbit in the middle of the trail but by a bear with her cubs that suddenly appeared from behind some rocks.
Russell’s Sketch Box, unknown maker, ca. 1864-1926, wood. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Amon G. Carter Collection, 1961.66.
Representing Oklahoma in Statuary Hall is a sculpture of the humorist and political pundit Will Rogers, a long-time friend of Russell. Rogers wrote of his friend, “He had a great underlying spiritual feeling, a great sympathy and understanding for men of the world. He not only left us great living pictures of what the West was, but he left us an example [of] how to live in friendship with all mankind.” —
Russell’s Retreat: Summers at Glacier National Park
Through April 2027
Sid Richardson Museum
309 Main Street, Fort Worth, TX 76102
(817) 332-6554 sidrichardsonmuseum.org
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