Charles Marion Russell was born in St. Louis in 1864 and came to Montana Territory in 1880, at 16, with a head full of the West he had read about. He spent about two years with a hunter and trapper in the Judith Basin, then worked as a night wrangler on cattle drives for more than a decade.
He drew and painted the whole time. One of his best-known early works, a small watercolor of a starving cow during the brutal winter of 1886-87, was sent by a ranch foreman to the owners in place of a written report. It later became known as “Waiting for a Chinook” and helped make his name.
Great Falls years
In 1896 Russell married Nancy Cooper, and they settled in Great Falls the next year. Nancy managed the business side of his work, negotiating prices and arranging exhibitions in New York and London. Her management is widely credited with turning a local cowboy painter into one of the best-paid artists of his time.
Russell built a log cabin studio next to their house in 1903, and that is where he produced most of his mature work: oil paintings, watercolors, bronze sculptures and illustrated letters to friends. His subjects were cowboys, Native people of the Plains, wildlife and the open range, often shown at the moment before the old way of life disappeared.
He died in Great Falls in 1926. His mural “Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians at Ross’ Hole” hangs in the House chamber of the State Capitol in Helena.
The C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls preserves his house and studio and holds a large collection of his work.