Page 140 - TheRussellCatalogue2016

174CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926) Portrait of Indian, 1901oil15 1⁄2 x 12 inchesAlthough Chares M. Russell is not generally known as a portraitist, over the course of his career he produced a remarkable number of such works, mostly full gures. His subjects ranged the gamut of frontier types—cowboys and Indians on foot and on horseback, trappers and traders, scouts and outlaws, anthropomorphic animals, and even Russell himself. Between 1898 and 1903, the artist created at least three dozen traditional head and shoulders portraits of Native subjects, far more than at any other comparable time in his career. More than a dozen tribes are represented in this group as well as a number of famous Indian leaders including Sitting Bull, Crowfoot, Deaf Bull, and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who Russell painted at least six times. e artist based many of his Indian likenesses on photographs taken by Miles City, Montana, photographer L.A. Hu man, O. S. Go of Bismarck, Dakota Territory, and others. A popular lithograph of Chief Joseph also seems to have inspired his brush. Although Russell executed most of these likenesses in watercolor, he produced a handful of oil portraits as well. e majority of his subjects are male and appear in a head and shoulders, full face pose. A few others are captured in three-quarter view. Most are draped in a blanket or clad in buckskin with appropriate ethnographic details in the way of hairstyle, jewelry, feathers, and beadwork. e source of Russell’s interest in portraiture at the turn of the twentieth century is uncertain. He may have been in uenced by the well-publicized e orts of a pair of Midwestern artists, E.A. Burbank and Joseph Henry Sharp, who, motivated bythe trope of the “vanishing race,” were then crisscrossing the West, painting as many Native subjects as possible. Duringthe period of Russell’s greatest portrait production, both Sharp and Burbank made extended visits to Montana Indian reservations and Russell probably knew of their presence and work. Both artists enjoyed the lavish patronage of well-heeled collectors and cultural repositories such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Field Museum of Chicago. U.S. President eodore Roosevelt applauded their work as well.Russell likely hoped to capitalize on this urry of public interest in Indian portraiture. In addition to selling individual works, he had the W. T. Ridgley Co. of Great Falls produce some as prints and, for a time, the artist’s likeness of Chief Joseph also appeared on customer statements issued by the Great Falls National Bank.Rich in color and ethnographic detail, Russell’s oil, Portrait of an Indian 1901, is one of the artist’s largest and strongest e orts in the portrait genre. Although unidenti ed, some believe the subject resembles Lakota chief, Sitting Bull, others the Cheyenne-Gros-Ventre warrior, Wolf Voice.B. Byron Price Director Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the West$125,000–175,000Recorded in Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonnė: CR.UNL.559