“The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective of Painting and Sculpture” will highlight more than 60 major works in oil and bronze by the renowned Western artist.
Revising conventional concepts about the artist, the exhibition will open at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) on October 17 and continue through January 10. This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Russell’s painting and sculptural work, was co-organized by the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art and Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Okla.
Russell (1864‱926) was known for his detailed depictions of minute elements of cowboy gear and complex movement. The depth of his concern about the destruction of native Northern Plains people and landscapes and his tolerance for human differences are hallmarks of his work. Russell viewed Indians as complex beings who held the only truly authentic claim to the American West, and protested governmental injustices and public indifference to their removal from their ancestral homelands. Indian women often were subjects in his work †in fact, depictions of Native Americans outnumber cowboys in his work by three to one.
In addition to revising the concept of Russell as a cowboy artist, the exhibition and accompanying catalog will invite a close look at his development as an artist. With no formal artistic training, Russell relied on his powers of observation, discipline and commitment, drawing inspiration from magazine illustrations as well as the work of earlier Western artists including George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Carl Wimar and Russell’s contemporary, Frederic Remington.
Born in 1864 and raised in St Louis, Mo., by a well-to-do family, as a child Russell enjoyed sketching and modeling animal figurines in wax and clay. He tended to identify with his pioneering relatives †including an uncle who established a major trading post on the Santa Fe Trail and married a Cheyenne woman †rather than the high society inclinations of his immediate family circle. He left home with his parents’ reluctant blessing at age 16 to live in what was then the Montana Territory and work on a sheep ranch. He eventually took a job as a cow hand, and while herding cattle enjoyed his first taste of fame for his watercolor “Waiting for a Chinook,” which features an emaciated cow encircled by wolves.
The exhibition will open with the action-packed cowboy paintings for which the artist is best known, and will conclude with his heroic portrayals of wildlife in pristine Western settings undisturbed by man. Section by section †from cowboys, outlaws and lawmen; the interaction of Indians and whites in the west; native life in all its aspects; white trappers and hunters; to wildlife and wilderness †the exhibition’s organization corresponds to Russell’s increasing alienation from modern urban civilization and growing devotion to pure nature.
The Denver Art Museum is on 13th Avenue between Broadway and Bannock Streets. For information, www.denverartmuseum.org or 720-865-5000.
