Page 147 - 2019 Russell Catalogue

182
CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926)
If ever I sent up an earnest prayer for help, I did it then, 1910 watercolor, en grisaille on paper
16 x 13 3⁄8 inches
Inscription: Ll: CMR/(skull)
$65,000–100,000
Recorded in Charles M. Russell: A Catalog Raisonné: CR.UNL.233
This painting depicts an incident described in Fifteen Thousand Miles By Stage—A Woman’s Unique Experience during Thirty Years of Path Finding and Pioneering from
the Missouri to the Pacific and from Alaska to Mexico. The watercolor en grisaille was one of seventeen paintings and sixty-eight pen-and-ink drawings Charles Russell did for the book. The author of the book, Carrie Adell Strahorn, was the wife of a publicist working for the Union Pacific. Through the recounting of the couple’s adventure-filled trips, the memoir promoted public curiosity about the West for the railroad. This ambitious illustrative effort for Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage was one of Russell’s last.
In the particular story depicted in this watercolor, Strahan recounts being separated from their guide and
pack near Spokane Falls, the crossroads for Indian tribes
of the surrounding area. When the couple ran into a migratory band, they “were urgently invited to dismount and reluctantly obeyed the signs.” Confused and unable to adequately communicate, the pair were hurried into a tepee.
“Inside,” Strahan writes, “(a woman) was writhing in agony but I did not dare give her anything and shook my head again. The old buck began to look pretty ugly,
and his manner was so imperative that I finally took the case, doled out a large dose of bicarbonate of soda and with many flourishes of doing some wonderful thing I gave her the simple dope. If I ever sent up an earnest prayer for help I did it then, for when medicine men fail among Indian tribes it is a serious matter and often means death to the doctor. We had not long to wait for the medicine came up again in short order and brought relief to the favorite of the camp.”1
Lot 182 was featured in the C.M. Russell Museum’s exhibition, Charles M. Russell: The Women in His Life and Art. Hosted by both the C.M. Russell Museum and Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, this landmark exhibition draws focus on important Russell works depicting women. A copy of the hard-bound exhibition catalogue featuring a plate of this piece will accompany the lot.
PROVENANCE
• Dallas Gordon Rupe, Dallas, Texas • Paula Rupe Dennard, Dallas, Texas • Caroline Harris, Dallas, Texas
1 Carrie Adell Strahorn, Fifteen Thousand Miles By Stage (New York, London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1915), 321–322.