Page 79 - TheRussellCatalogue2017

101 CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926) 1897 Christmas Menu watercolor 8 x 4 inches
$30,000–40,000
PROVENANCE
• Dr. E.M. Larson, Great Falls, Montana
• Private collection, California by descent
In her unpublished reminisces, Nancy Russell describes an incident that occurred around Christmas of 1897 that preceded what she called “Our First Real Money.”
e Park Hotel had a special Christmas dinner, and Charlie made an original water color on one hundred twenty- ve menu cards.* For this he received twenty dollars. Right there we had a real fuss. He had worked days on them, and I thought he should have at least as much as the cook and waiter would get per day.
It was no secret that Charlie’s attitude toward his work sometimes frustrated Nancy. Charlie’s nephew Austin Russell commented, “If left to himself, Charlie was not very practical; he would devote just as much care [as an artist] to things not meant to sell.”
Here we see the origins of Nancy’s highly focused management of Charlie’s business a airs. Within three years of their marriage, she had raised his average prices from $25 a painting to closer to $100. Less than a decade later, she was “ rmly” declining New York investment banker Malcom McKay’s request for a discount in successfully collecting $1,000 for Russell’s work.
*Relatively few are believed to have survived.