Indians shooting arrows at fleeing buffalos just feet away. A frontier explorer racing from a wounded yet still-charging grizzly. Two cowboys hushing their horses, as an Indian war party passes above on a ridge.
As these gripping vignettes in oil and many others make clear, Charles M. Russell, more than anything else, was a storyteller, perhaps the best in the history of Western American art.
That is the central theme of a sweeping retrospective exhibition, which continues through Jan. 10 at the Denver Art Museum. It then travels to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa — the show’s co-organizer — and Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
As hard as it is to believe, considering how large Russell stands in the world of Western art, this is the first comprehensive look at this Montana artist and his considerable legacy since his death in 1926.
“There’s never really been a major show of this scale,” said the curator Joan Troccoli, senior scholar in the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art.
The overdue exhibition is titled “The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell” for a reason. It contains 60 key works by the artist in oil, bronze and mixed media, including some that have rarely if ever been loaned previously.
What began as an idea for a modest show slowly grew into a large-scale undertaking through a timely convergence of forces. Among them was the cooperation of three influential scholars who, beginning in the 1980s, have reshaped thinking about Russell — Brian Dippie, Rick Stewart and Peter Hassrick, the recently retired director of the Petrie Institute.
Their involvement helped leverage the participation of the three institutions which have the most significant Russell holdings — the Gilcrease; Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Montana Historical Society in Helena.
A pivotal loan was “When the Land Belonged to God” (1914), the Montana society’s crown jewel. This spectacular 3 1/2-by-6-foot oil on canvas depicts a vast herd of buffalo emerging over a rise after crossing a river — the water dripping from their fur glistening in the light.
Exhibit secures artist’s place
This exhibition and the accompanying 270-page catalog set out to solidify Russell’s place as one of the great Western artists and fill out the understanding and appreciation of his work, and it succeeds admirably on both counts.
Although entirely self-taught, Russell molded himself over time into a highly accomplished artist who was capable of not only telling stories in pictures but rendering them with considerable painterly sophistication.
It is telling to see early in the exhibition the crude if promising early painting, “Breaking Camp” (circa 1885) and then witness the enormous strides Russell made by the time he created a work such as, “When Horses Talk War There’s Slim Chance for Truce” (1915).
There is much to admire in this latter work, including the flames of a campfire subtly reflected in a puddle in the foreground and Russell’s deft, almost impressionistic treatment of the grass.
The show and especially the catalog take great pains to situate Russell both within the broader history of the West and the more focused trajectory of Western art, with detailed explanations of the sources of his subject matter.
But other than a limited discussion of such elements as Russell’s use of circular compositions in works such as “Single-Handed” (1912), there is surprisingly little examination of the formal components of Russell’s work.
The show also makes little effort to place him in the broader context of the American art world, as a similarly groundbreaking Frederic Remington retrospective did in 1988.
For example, Winslow Homer, who was born a generation or so earlier, was still at work for much of Russell’s career. It is impossible not to see resonances between the older painter’s late work and some of Russell’s compositions, such as the latter’s haunting 1903 watercolor, “Last of a Thousand (Waiting for a Chinook).”
Colleague overlooked
Also puzzling is how few comparisons there are between Russell and Frederic Remington. If the two were not exactly rivals like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the two are almost inevitably spoken of together and their careers and subject matter often intersected.
The show and catalog do draw a strong distinction in asserting Russell’s ability to more dynamically and realistically render Western life. Unlike Remington, Russell lived in the West, including 11 years as a night herder on a cattle range.
“They’re really, really different,” Troccoli said. “There are some pictures in this show where Russell takes on subjects similar to those of Remington, especially to do with being a cowboy, and he says in effect, ‘This is the right way to do this subject.’ “
But again, there is little comparison of such elements as the two artists’ very different treatment of light. Some of Remington’s most celebrated paintings are his late nocturnal paintings, which have little equivalent in Russell’s work.
But any quibbles over what might be missing in this exhibition are more than made up by what is here — a handsome, unprecedented overview of one of the integral voices in Western art.
If this show leaves some questions unanswered, it provides a long-overdue foundation for further research and lays the seeds for a host of potential follow-up exhibitions.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“THE MASTERWORKS OF CHARLES M. RUSSELL: A RETROSPECTIVE OF PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE.”
Art. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Bannock Street and Broadway. This touring exhibition, organized by the museum, offers the most comprehensive look yet at one of Western art’s key figures. Through Jan. 10. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Free with regular museum admission. 720-865-5000 or .
