Page 144 - 2015 Russell Catalogue

201CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926)For Supremacy, [Indian Warfare; An Indian Massacre; Everywhere the Natives were Rallying to Drive the Intruders Away], 1895Charlie Russell favored two approaches in his paintings of intertribal conflict: running fights with riders clashing at full gallop, and dismounted warriors making desperate stands against charging enemies. Both approaches are evident in this important painting from Russell’s early period. For Supremacy is significant because it served as a prototype for the artist in the creation of several subsequent works between 1895 and 1908.Russell’s inspiration for this painting came, in part, from the stories he heard in Canada, while visiting the Blood band of the Blackfoot Confederacy in 1888. The artist claimed to have heard a rousing portrayal of the counting of a coup in the lodge of an eighty-year‒old warrior named Medicine Whip.Showing a battle between tribal enemies––Blackfeet and Crows––For Supremacy signifies Russell’s growing mastery of complex, multi-figure compositions and his natural gift for portraying “vivid and revealing action.” The composition is ingenious, leading the viewer’s eye into the action along a diagonal created by a fallen warrior in the left foreground. Riders racing out of the picture on either side are anchored by the set piece in the center pitting a dismounted war chief, his wounded black horse beside him, and an enemy warrior charging past on an eye-catching white horse, his bow tautly drawn, ready to release an arrow, ignoring those of his enemies storming to the defense of their downed leader. Rifle in hand and with a shield to protect him, the war chief stands planted like a piece of statuary, his discarded robe serving as a base. This one-on-one duel holds the picture together, imposing order on chaos and rendering the battle’s furious action coherent.For Supremacy is also important because of its exhibition history. Charles Schatzlein acquired the painting directly from Russell, certainly by 1897, but possibly earlier. It was exhibited various times, notably at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha in1898. For Supremacy was first reproduced in Harry C. Freeman’s A Brief History of Butte, Montana: The World’s Greatest MiningCamp (1900). Schatzlein called the painting “Indian Battle” in an article published in a Butte newspaper in March 1904, which included talk about displaying the painting along with others Schatzlein owned in the Montana pavilion at the St. Louis World’s Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exhibition). Charles Schatzlein died in 1911, but his wife Emma retained some of his collection, displaying nine Russell paintings in a tribute exhibition in Great Falls in April 1927, including one titled “Indian Fight.” She sold three paintingsto Will Rogers at the exhibition, and it is quite possible that Sid Willis acquired what we know as For Supremacy at that time. Willis prepared a pamphlet called “Souvenir Illustrated Catalog of The Mint” in 1928 and listed For Supremacy under the title, “Indian Warfare.” When he sold The Mint Collection in September 1945, Willis included For Supremacy in the inventory of paintings that went to the new owners. It was exhibited at the Knoedler & Company gallery in New York in February, 1952 and subsequently purchased by Amon G. Carter of Fort Worth, Texas, becoming a part of the Amon Carter Museum collection when it opened in 1961.Some sense of the environment surrounding Schatzlein’s personal collection comes from William B. Cameron, who visited Buttein May 1897. Cameron was there to drum up business for a new sportsman’s journal published out of St. Paul, Minnesota, titled Western Field and Stream. The salesman encountered something unexpected when he arrived at his hotel: paintings on the lobby walls that “in brilliance of coloring and execution, topped anything of the kind. . . . I had ever before seen. In vivid and revealing action, they . . . [illustrated] the fast-disappearing lawless West and the picturesque characters who made up its population.” These paintings were, the desk clerk told him, the work of Charles Russell, and he directed Cameron to Schatzlein’s Paint Store “around the corner” to learn more about the artist. Charles Schatzlein was a “friend of Russell. He’ll give you the dope on the paintbrush juggler.” Delighted by Cameron’s enthusiasm, Schatzlein showed him a “superb collection” of Russell paintings. “I determined then and there,” Cameron recalled, “that if persuasion could accomplish it, the artist would before long be doing work for ‘Field and Stream.’”For Supremacy obviously impressed Cameron. After signing Russell to a contract to paint twenty oils in black and white for reproduction in Western Field and Stream, he encouraged the artist to revisit his earlier inspiration. Russell obliged with a painting showing “an old time battle betwene [sic] Crows and black feet [sic]” that appeared in the April 1898 issue of the renamed Field and Stream magazine as The Making of a Warrior. Compositionally, this painting is a twin to For Supremacy, but the variant titles invite different readings. For Supremacy focuses on tribal struggles for dominance. The Making of a Warrior emphasizes the brave displays that elevated individuals to prominence in their tribes. The shift was significant, because it allowed Russell to portray Plains Indian culture through representative figures to serve his artistic purposes. He had never claimed to be a historian; he was a storyteller in paint who sought the truth behind the facts. His version of “the West that has passed” was painstakingly realistic in its particulars, but entirely romantic in spirit––emotional, subjective, and heartfelt. As a gifted raconteur himself, Russell invented fictional characters like his cowboy narrator Rawhide Rawlins to stand in for all the cowboys he heard yarn spinning. Similarly, he often gave individual identities to his Indian figures, permitting representative tribal types to spring into life.Brian W. Dippie Professor Emeritus of History University of Victoria, British Columbia