cowboy artist – Malcolm's Round Table

It’s difficult to read about Montana without coming across Charlie Russell sooner or later. He’s the state’s most celebrated and most widely known artist. This book offers a view of Russell’s work in the collection of the Montana Historical Society in Helena. Nothing is better than seeing the paintings up close. If you can’t do that, this book is a fine introduction.

From the Publisher: Montana’s Charlie Russell brings to life the Montana Historical Society’s world-class collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, bronzes, and illustrated letters by the Treasure State’s famed “Cowboy Artist.” Using advanced digital technology, each of the 230 pieces in the Society’s permanent collection has been meticulously photographed to bring to life, in vivid color, Russell’s artistic mastery. Carefully researched scholarship illuminates the stories behind each artwork. The result is a catalog of Russell’s art as you’ve never seen it before.

From the Montana Historical Society Press Release

MHS RELEASING NEW CHARLIE RUSSELL BOOK MORE THAN 60 YEARS IN THE MAKING

“In 1952 the Montana Historical Society acquired the Malcolm Mackay family collection of the artwork of Charles M. Russell that became the heart of its unmatched assemblage of the famed Montana cowboy artist’s masterpieces, paintings, illustrated letters, sketches and sculpture.

“Since then, it has been the dream of many to reproduce the entire MHS Russell art collection in a high-quality book that would celebrate the artist’s vision of Montana and the breadth of his amazing career — that took him from cowboying in the Judith Gap to one of the best loved artists of the West…

“…K. Ross Toole, MHS director in 1952, said while raising funds to acquire the Mackay collection: ‘If Montana has contributed one thing to the heritage of the whole West, it is Charles M. Russell’s paintings …. It was Montana that inspired him; it was Montana that he painted.'”

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With this book on your coffee table, you can turn off the TV for the Winter.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “The Seeker,” a book about mountains, first loves and betrayal set partly in Montana’s Glacier National Park.

Buffaloed by Fairlee Winfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When teenager Ovidia Odegard arrives in the United States in 1904, her first duty is to find suitable work so she can begin paying back her uncle for his out-of-pocket costs in sponsoring her immigration from Norway. Her dream, though is not only to be an American, but a Westerner, and that includes wearing a fancy buckskin jacket.

Providentially, Nancy Russell–the wife of the famed Montana cowboy artist Charles M. Russell–is looking for a housemaid at the couple’s home in Great Falls. When Ovida sees a copy of Russell’s pictorial “Studies of Western Life,” she can’t wait to board the train and head for the West she’s seen at the Nickelodeon.

When she arrives in Great Falls, she finds a dirty, modern city, and once she meets Charlie Russell, she begins discovering that the idealized West as it exists in books and movies is gone–if it ever existed. While Nancy Russell wants contracts and sales for Charlie’s art, Charlie would rather spend his time spinning yarns about the old days with his “bunch” down at the saloon. Not surprisingly, the house is a mess.

“Buffaloed” is Ovidia’s story as told to her grandson just before she died at 94, and it all begins when she mentions a secret she has never shared with anyone: the famous Charles M. Russell mural “Lewis and Clark Meeting the Indians at Ross’ Hole” at the Montana State House of Representatives” wasn’t really painted by Russell. It was a con, or so Ovidia claims.

Ovidia dangles this con before her grandson’s eyes throughout her remembrances because, as she sees it, he wouldn’t understand it if he didn’t know what happened in the Russell household from the moment she reported for work. What had she gotten herself into?

This well-researched book is just the kind of yarn that the master of tall tales, one Charles Marion Russell (1862-1926), would endorse without hesitation. The dialogue, the atmosphere, and the historical period in “Buffaloed” are superb. Fans of Russell and Montana history will discover that the book includes real events and places along with a supporting cast of historical personages.

In his book “Montana Adventure,” a friend and contemporary of Russell, Frank B. Linderman, writes that “Charlie Russell was the most lovable man I have ever known.” This is the Charlie Russell who emerges in Fairlee Winfield’s wonderful novel.

Now, if you live in Montana, mostly everything having to do with Charlie Russell is sacred, and that includes a lot of living and story telling that was also delightfully profane. Ovidia does have a confession to make in regard to that mural, but this is a novel, of course.

Winfield’s disclaimer at the beginning of the book reminds us that “Buffaloed” is a work of fiction. In addition to the standard reference books about Charles and Nancy Russell, Winfield also had a more personal resource for this story: her Norwegian grandmother did work in the artist’s home and had a lot of humorous and gritty stories to tell.

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Malcolm's Round Table

Tag: cowboy artist

Briefly Noted: ‘Montana’s Charlie Russell’

Review: ‘Buffaloed’ by Fairlee Winfield