Page 126 - TheRussellCatalogue2016

160CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926) Grizzly at Close Quarters, 1901watercolor17 x 14 inchesSigned and dated Ll: CM Russell/skull 1901Violent collisions between animals and humans were a staple of Charles M. Russell’s art from the time he was a child in Missouri. As a young man making his way in the wilds of Montana in the mid-1880s, Russell no doubt read of such encounters in newspapers and heard them recounted in the tales of experienced hunters and trappers like Jake Hoover, for whom he tended camp and from whom he learned much of hunting and animal anatomy and lore. Although cowboy life demanded his attention for a decade and was the subject of much of his art during the 1880s and early 1890s, Russell continued to sketch, paint and model wildlife as well. By 1891, the famed naturalist and publisher Charles Hallock considered the artist, “One of the best animal painters in the world.”In the late 1890s Russell began to write and illustrate stories for magazines of outdoor life such as Recreation, Western Field and Stream, and Sports A eld. As his work became better known, his hunting scenes and paintings of wildlife began to attract the patronage of wealthy sportsmen, as well as less well-to-do admirers, who enjoyed the same subjects on postcards, prints and calendars. e element of surprise sets in motion the action portrayed in Grizzly at Close Quarters, as it does in many of Russell’s so-called “predicament” paintings. In this work, a bear suddenly appears behind a prospector and his mule, startling the pair, who are trapped between the proverbial “rock and a hard place.” Although the trapper gets o a shot before the bear closes in, Russell, the master storyteller, lets the viewer decide the nal outcome of the encounter. It is perhaps worth noting that in the 1910 print of the work by the W. T. Ridgely Co., of Great Falls, the prospector wears a red rather than a blue shirt.B. Byron Price Director Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West$700,000–900,000Recorded in Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonnė: CR.UNL.206 PROVENANCE• Collection of J.T. O’Connor, Vancouver, British Columbia• Joe Berlin, Montana• He el Galleries,1980’s• Quail Hollow Galleries, Ltd., 1986• Private Collection, Montana, 2001• Private Collection, Canada• Biltmore Galleries, Scottsdale• Private Collection, Florida