Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist

by John Taliaferro

This first comprehensive biography of Charles M. Russell examines the colorful life and times of Montana’s famed Cowboy Artist. Born to an affluent St. Louis family in 1864, young Russell read thrilling tales of the West and filled sketchbooks with imagined frontier scenes. At sixteen he left home and headed west to become a cowboy. In Montana Territory he consorted with cowpunchers, Indians, preachers, saloon keepers, and prostitutes, while celebrating the waning American frontier’s glory days in some 4,000 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Before his death in 1926, Russell saw the world change dramatically, and the West he loved passed into legend. By then he was revered as one of the country’s ranking Western artist with works displayed in the finest galleries, his romantic vision of the Old West forever shaping our own. Taliaferro reveals the man behind the myth in his multifaceted extraordinarily gifted, self-effacing, charming, mischievous, and playful, a friend to rough frontier denizens and Hollywood stars alike. The author also explores Russell’s controversial partnership with his fiery young wife, Nancy, whose ambition and business savvy helped establish Russell as one of America’s most popular artists.

Genres: Biography, Art, Westerns, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

A graduate of Harvard College, John Taliaferro is a former senior editor at Newsweek.

Reviews

[Alexw · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uninspired biography about an artist who still inspires the essence of the Old West. While the descriptions of his famous paintings with their own special stories is riveting, you never get to find out who the real Charles Russell was or the brains of his success, his loving wife Nancy.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting picture of his life and why the cowboy culture grew, and has continued to be popular. Turner's thesis on the closing of the frontier; the immigration in the east of the United States, movies: all contributed to the vision of the West which Russell captured.

It is an exciting, easily-read, well-written book.

[Beau Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books on Charles Russell. It captures all the details and side stories of his life and the wonderful western paintings that I love so much. University Of Oklahoma Press always does a great job with their historical books of the west.

--Beau Smith
The Flying Fist Ranch

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging book about the life of ‘America’s Cowboy Artist’ Charles M. Russell. I read this book for research I’m doing into William S. Hart, the Western silent movie actor who’s film career spanned 1914 to 1925. Several of Russel’s works, painting and sculptures, are featured in Hart’s home in Southern California, now turned museum (operated by Los Angeles Natural History Museum). Hart and Russell became friends in 1902, long before Hart became famous. They met in Great Falls, Montana where Charlie lived and worked, when Hart was a stage actor with the traveling stage production, 'The Christian'. The group was invited to Russell’s home; Hart and Russell discovered that they had much in common; a love for the West and an appreciation for Native American cultures. Both had lived for a brief period of time with Native Americans.

Taliaferro writes of Russell’s early life; how he was born into a well-off family in St. Louis, MO and moved to Montana on his own at the age of sixteen in 1880. He never went back. He lived among cowboys, ranch hands, saloon patrons, and for a short time several groups of Native Americans when he traveled to Alberta, Canada. He also read and studied a great deal of Native American history, all of which contributed to Russell’s famous works including the Buffalo Hunt (of which he did 50), among others that included several commissions, one for Montana’s State Capitol building (1912), patrons of the Calgary Stampede in Alberta and several Hollywood actors and producers. Interesting is how Russell suffered from a disability, dysgraphia, which impacted his ability to construct sentences and write coherently yet he was a prolific and talented artist.

The saying ‘behind every great man is a great woman’ is true in Russell’s case, as he (likely) never would have achieved the success he did if not for his wife, Nancy. She is described in the book as abrasive and difficult, consistent with other sources, some that describe her far more harshly.

The book is well researched. Taliaferro does a fine job weaving together a story that gives insight into Russell’s character and his art—Russell comes through as a colourful, humble, gifted artist who painted the American West with sensitivity and candor.

[Marian Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. My father was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, the setting for most of Charlie Russell’s story, and that’s part of my interest in reading this biography. From early childhood, I remember a Russell print that was on the wall in my father’s office. And in a very distant way, our family actually is related to Charlie Russell (his wife’s father in his later years wed my great-great aunt who lived in Great Falls). This summer—while visiting Great Falls—my husband and I went to the Charles M. Russell Museum, which made me want to learn more about his life. This is an excellent, accurate, and up-to-date biography. It’s a fascinating story about the west, the state of Montana, and the charismatic artist Charles Russell. The book is very well written and is my favorite book this year (so far)!

[Kenneth Iltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. Well researched.

[Rebecca Carwile]

I didn't actually finish this one. Uncharacteristic of me, but it was rather dry for bedtime reading.