Almost as familiar as the images of the American West he painted
and sculpted is the figure of Charles M. Russell himself. Standing
or mounted, in boots and wide-brimmed hat, sash knotted at his
waist, gaze steady under a hank of unruly hair: he is the one and
only "Cowboy Artist." What is not so well known is the story that
unfolds in the myriad photographs of Russell, pictures that
document a remarkable life while also reflecting the evolution of
photography and the depiction of the American West at the turn of
the twentieth century. This biography makes use of hundreds of
images of Russell, many never before published, to explore the role
of photography in shaping the artist's public image and the making
and selling of his art. More than that, the book shows how the
Cowboy Artist personified what he portrayed.
Born in 1864 to a well-to-do family in St. Louis, Russell was
smitten early on by the burgeoning art of photography and the
images of the West that were proliferating as rapidly as the
frontier was disappearing. When he moved to Helena at sixteen, his
passions came together, as professional and amateur photographers
made their way to the Montana Territory to document the cowboy life
that Charlie was embracing and beginning to paint. Larry Len
Peterson traces Russell's image and his career from these first
adventures to his apotheosis as an artist, and then to his
California period and his final days as the grand statesman of the
American West. Along the way we meet some of the most interesting
photographers of the era, as Russell posed for Edward S. Curtis,
Roland Reed, Clarence S. Bull, Hildore C. Eklund, and Dorothea
Lange, among others. Because Nancy Russell used photographs to
promote her artist husband's career and artistic identity, we also
see the medium's early application as a marketing tool in the hands
of a surprisingly savvy businesswoman.
Alongside Peterson's engrossing tale of the life of this
American icon, the hundreds of photographs of Russell, his friends,
family members, business associates, colleagues, and celebrities of
his time offer a unique view of the artist's historic and cultural
milieu--a view at once panoramic and intimate.
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