Page 160 - 2020 Russell Catalogue

189
CHARLES M. RUSSELL (1864–1926)
The Bluffers
bronze
7 1⁄2 x 17 1⁄2 x 8 1⁄2 inches, Nelli Art Bronze Works casting
$20,000–30,000
The Bluffers depicts a possible, but still uncertain, confrontation between a grizzly bear and a buffalo bull. In 1902, Russell completed an ink wash gouache and graphite picture titled Death Battle of a Buffalo and Grizzly Bear. It was an illustration for a true story of just such a scene recanted by Dr. William A. Allen in his book Adventures with Indians and Game.1 This Russell composition on paper closely resembles the image of another bronze by Isidore Bonheur. However, it contrasts with Russell’s 1924 Bluffers version in bronze, which stops short of the deadly encounter, focusing instead on the likely lead-up by the two parties contemplating such a violent event. Rick Stewart estimates the number of casts executed during Nancy Russell’s lifetime at a relatively small total of nine.
In his book Charles M. Russell Sculptor, Stewart writes, “By November 1941 [Homer] Britzman had at least two additional casts [of The Bluffers]—one for himself and another for Earl Adams, the third co-partner—made at the Nelli Art Bronze Works, successor to the California Art Bronze Foundry. A year later, another copy was delivered to Charles Jones, and yet another to Britzman, according to a Nelli foundry invoice dated March 31, 1943.”
PROVENANCE
• Private collection, Massachusetts
LITERATURE
• Rick Stewart, Charles M. Russell: Sculptor (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1994), 278–279 1
Adventures with Indians and Game (Chicago: A. W. Bower & Co., 1903) 218–225.