Charles M. Russell (Part 1)

Sunset on the Range

In the Pale Glow of a Sinking Sun, the Silent Rider, on His Beloved Pinto Pony, Passes Out from the “Settlement;” Follows
the Little Lane, Heading Straight Toward Distant Great Divide, Disappears into the Dusk of the West. The Cowboy Passes

(By Dan R. Conway)

originally published in the Hysham Echo October 28, 1926

He’s left us for that sunny range so fair

Which lies afar across the Great Divide;

And gentle are the breezes blowing there,

All low and sweet upon the Other Side.

With storms his trail will never be beset;

No wild winds howl where he is safe at rest;

No dangers on those peaceful plains are met;

No perils there strike terror to his breast.

He rides a range where blossoms sweetly bend

And nod and smile as he goes loping by;

Where Nature’s colors, in a wondrous blend,

Are flung afar on coulee, hill and sky.

Soft are the summer winds which kiss his cheek!

Smooth are the trails and fair, in which he rides!

And there, through shaded glen and mount and peak,

The Round-up Boss his way forever guides.

--- E. A. Brininstool

The story of the west is a story of a time of heroes - men who were born with a mission to fulfill. And, of all those who appear in bold relief upon the pages of the pioneer days, none may claim greater stature than the chief figure of the cattle range. Cowpuncher, cattleman, cowboy, horse wrangler, herder, little does it matter what name others have given to him, this character has remained - individual - himself. Over the plains of central, eastern and northern Montana he has ridden, his type, his costume, his characteristics practically unchanged; he, with the sky for a roof, and the open range for his home, was one of the most dominant, self-efficient figures in the history of the land.

Montana cowboy life and the name of Charles M. Russell were almost synonymous. Having been actually associated for years with range work in the days when the cowman reigned supreme and the range was free; having actually endured the hardships and privations of everyday life on the plains, Montana’s “Cowboy Artist,” whom now we mourn, was the true type of the Old West.

Passing of the “Cowboy Artist”

When Charles M. Russell passed away at his home in Great Falls on October 25, (1926) Montana not only lost the greatest nationally known genius that she ever produced, but the Treasure State saw the close of a life that was typical of the old west - a career that has had more than all others to do with the preservation of the true western type and character. His Montana friends saw the passing of a gentle and a kindly man, a pioneer of the plains country, whose simplicity, whose homely yet inspiring philosophy made his friendship a thing to be sought after and dearly cherished by all with whom he came in contact in his everyday life.

The Cowboy

Like everything truly distinctive, the life of the cowboy has lent itself to literary abuse, and indolent, unscrupulous writers have pictured him as the embodiment of license and uproarious iniquity. If he were only this, the great business which he conducted on the plains could never have assumed the imposing proportions that it did. Picturesque in effect and environment, the Montana cowboy was the most gallant representative of a human industry second to none in antiquity. Today, the long trails over which he drove the herds have been blocked, the ranges are traversed by barbed wire, and the grand freedom of the unowned prairies has been exchanged for the bounds of an exact ownership.

Although it cannot be said of Charles M. Russell that he was a cowpuncher, he was a cowboy and his knowledge of the west was based upon daily experience during his early years of a cowboy’s life. The outside world looked upon Russell merely as a great artist - the greatest in his particular sphere. In Montana, we saw in the man something infinitely more than that. To his home people, he was the West; for, in both his personality and his art he was the true living embodiment of the characters who built the foundation for this great commonwealth.

Charles M. Russell, the Artist

Charles M. Russell was an artist. No more able than he ever wielded the brush and palette to portray a western scene. In all of his work, from the very beginning, composition and technique were brushed aside for the historical appeal of the subject matter. Out of the richness of his personal experiences he has created for a younger generation the real West of pioneer days. His manner was naturalistic rather than realistic. After the dime novels and the wild west shows and the movies which have built up the life of the cowboy for most of the easterners, Mr. Russell’s paintings, full of action and color, gave dignity to the romance of the west.

Starting his career as an artist in 1892, his exceptional talent in a very short time assured him a leading place in his own line. He was self taught. He never copied a dominant master in an art school. He merely tried to transfer to canvas the country he loved so well that it was part of him. He was so individual that modern movements in the art world, eddying around him during his sojourns in the art centers, never touched the big simplicity of his nature.

The Indians and cowboys of his canvasses bear out his oft emphasized creed of accurate craftsmanship. They never hurled lariats or waved tomahawks with the wrong hand. Each detail had biological and sartorial correctness. You could tell that his horses had been “broke” by the saddle marks and the brands. Whether it was the pattern of a flannel shirt or a medicine man’s coup stick, Russell drew it as he knew it to be. He was too genuine to trust to tricks of imagination. Once he said to a critic: “I try to paint true like it seems to me.” And he did.

Thus, being a cowboy and truly western, he preserved for posterity as no one else could do, the cowboy, the cowboy’s life and the things the cowboy saw and knew in their absolute true light. Such a chapter in American history demanded preservation for reasons aesthetic and practical alike, and it is fortunate that, at a time when fiction was so believing the western race, Mr. Russell’s actual knowledge and graphic expression in art preserved the true story of the cowboy and the cowboy’s west, bringing before posterity the sweet and majesty and splendid, clean atmosphere of the plains.

Russell’s Life in Montana

The story of Charles M. Russell’s life has often been told, and most Montanans are familiar with the romance of his early days on the state’s then unbroken plains. He was born at St. Louis, Mo., March 19, 1865, and more than 46 years of his life have been spent in Montana.

At the age of 14, a restless boy who had heard much of the far west, and who could not be made to attend school by his parents, he was forever dreaming of Montana and the Rocky Mountain region. He had heard the alluring stories of this wonderful country of unowned expanses ever since the time he was first old enough to understand them. On several different occasions he ran away from school and started for this great west, only to each time by brought back to his home. Russell’s father, Charles S. Russell, who was a wealthy manufacturer of fire brick, at length came to the conclusion that the boy was so determined to go west that it would be impossible to hold him at home longer.

His Ancestors Were Frontiersmen

Young Russell had come by this love of the west naturally for his great uncle on his mother’s side was William Bent, one of the most famous characters of western frontier life. Russell’s grandmother was a sister of William Bent.

The Bent family is one of the oldest and most distinguished in St. Louis. Silas Bent, father of Russell’s grandmother, was born in the colony of Massachusetts in 1768. His father was one of those who attended the “Boston Tea Party.” Silas Bent came to St. Louis in 1804.

William W. Bent, with his three brothers, Charles, George and Robert, became prominent in the Indian trade in the west between 1820 and 1850 and remained trading in that region until they died.

George Bent was on the Upper Missouri, in what is today Montana, as early as 1816 in the employ of the American Fur company. In 1824 William Bent built a trading post on the Arkansas river in Colorado, just below the present city of Pueblo and was the first permanent white settler in what is now Colorado. In 1828 this same William Bent with St. Vrain, another noted Indian trader commenced the construction of the celebrated Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas river about 5 miles from where Pueblo stands today. It was destined to become the most famous of all the western trading posts from the Mexican line to Canada, not excepting Fort Union or Fort Benton. Print this post