Marion Russell

Fess Parker portrayed Charlie Russell in an unaired Pilot TV show titled “Russell”. It can be seen on Bob Terry’s anthology of The Forsaken Westerns. Russell’s “Innocent Allies” is featured. In the pilot Charlie is working as a ranch hand and wrangler when he witnesses a stage coach holdup. He befriends a woman passenger, played by Beverly Garland, who has just purchased a local saloon. It is not clear when this pilot was made but it was likely before Parker’s Daniel Boone and after his Davey Crocket series. At the end of the show we are shown several of Russell’s greatest works.

Russell was inducted into the inaugural class of the Montana Outdoor Hall of Fame in 2014. He is honored at the Stockmen's Memorial in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada.

In July 2011, the price of Russell's work soared again. His 1892 oil painting Water for Camp (depicting Native American women dipping pots into a stream) and his 1924 watercolor A Dangerous Sport (in which two cowboys lasso a mountain lion) sold for nearly $1.5 million each.

Russell's Piegans sold in 2005 for $5.6 million, more than double the highest price his work had sold for a few years earlier. At auction in 2008, Russell's oil painting The Hold Up (20 Miles to Deadwood) sold for $5.2 million, and his bronze sculpture Buffalo Hunt (which depicted two Native Americans attacking a running bison) sold for $4.1 million. In July 2009, Russell's 1907 watercolor and gouache The Truce went for $2.03 million to an anonymous phone bidder. Russell's 1911 18 inches (460 mm) by 13 inches (330 mm) bronze sculpture, Bronc Twister, auctioned in 2008 for $805,000—far above the $300,000 pre-auction estimate.

Timothy Egan, in his 1998 book Lasso the Wind, quotes Russell as saying, "In my book a pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water, cut down the trees, killed the Indian who owned the land and called it progress."

Some of Russell's paintings were shown during the credits of the ABC television series How the West Was Won, starring James Arness. James McDowell Sr. of Tulsa, Oklahoma donated 24 volumes of his illustrations to the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma in 1997.

C. M. Russell and his friends. A detail of the picture was used for a Montana U.S. Postage Stamp in 1989.

In 1985, Russell was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in New York. In 1991, Russell was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Robert Taylor hosted and portrayed Russell in a 1967 episode, "A Wrangler's Last Ride" on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days. In this episode, Russell gives up being a cowboy to become a full-time painter. Susan Brown was cast as Nancy Cooper, whom Russell married.

In 1960, Charles M. Russell Elementary School was built in Missoula, Montana. In 1965, a high school was built on the north side of the Missouri River in Great Falls, Montana and named Charles M. Russell High School, in honor of Russell. Ian Tyson's 1987 album, Cowboyography, includes a song titled "The Gift" telling the story of Russell. Michael Nesmith, of Monkees fame, recorded a song titled "Laugh Kills Lonesome" which was inspired by, and describes the contents of, a well-known Russell painting of the same name. Native Blackfeet folk singer Jack Gladstone wrote a song dedicated to Russell titled "When the Land Belonged to God." The song describes Russell's painting of the same name.

The Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge is named for Russell, a World War II Liberty Ship, SS Charles M. Russell, was named in his honor and launched in 1943 in Portland, Oregon.

A collection of short stories called Trails Plowed Under was published a year after his death. In 1929 Nancy Russell published a collection of Charlie's letters titled Good Medicine.

On the day of Russell's funeral in 1926, the children in Great Falls were released from school so they could watch the funeral procession. Russell's coffin was displayed in a glass-sided coach, pulled by four black horses.

Laugh Kills Lonesome, oil on canvas, 1925. Along with Bronc to Breakfast and In Without Knocking, arguably the most famous of Russell's "cowboy" paintings.

The C. M. Russell Museum Complex in Great Falls, Montana houses more than 2,000 Russell artworks, personal objects, and artifacts. Other major collections are held at the Montana Historical Society in Helena, Montana, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth. His mural Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the state capitol building in Helena, and his 1918 painting Piegans sold for $5.6 million at a 2005 auction. In 1955, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Deer in Forest (White Tailed Deer), 1917, Oil on canvasboard

In 1913, Russell painted Wild Horse Hunters, which depicts riders capturing wild horses, each band of which is dominated by a stallion. He used as much color as an artist could on his mountain landscapes. As an artist, Russell emerged at a time when the Wild West was of intense interest to people who lived in cities, and cattle drives were still being conducted over long distances. He painted images of the Old West that were later adopted by Westerns, which became a movie staple.

In 1912 he joined cowboy artist Frank Tenney Johnson on a sketching expedition to the Blackfoot Reservation east of Glacier National Park in Montana.

Maney Snows Have Fallen...(Letter from Ah-Wa-Cous (Charles Russell) to Short Bull), ca.1909 - 1910, Watercolor, pen & ink on paper, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The Custer Fight (lithograph, 1903). Depicts the Battle of the Little Bighorn from the point of view of the Native American combatants.

When Cowboys Get in Trouble (The Mad Cow), 1899, Oil on canvas, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

In 1896, Russell married his wife Nancy. He was 32 and she was 18. In 1897, they moved from the small community of Cascade, Montana to the bustling county seat of Great Falls. Russell spent the majority of the remainder of his life there. He continued with his art, becoming a local celebrity and gaining the acclaim of critics worldwide. As Russell was not skilled in marketing his work, Nancy is generally given credit for making him an internationally known artist. She set up many shows for Russell throughout the United States and in London, creating many followers of Russell.

Bringing Up the Trail, 1895, Oil on canvas, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The Marriage Ceremony (Indian Love Call), 1894, Oil on cardboard, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Cowpunching Sometimes Spells Trouble, 1889, Oil on canvas, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Beginning in 1888, Russell spent a period living with the Blood Indians, a branch of the Blackfeet nation. Scholars believe that he gained much of his intimate knowledge of Native American culture during this period. When he returned to the Judith Basin in 1889, he found it filling with settlers. He worked in more open places for a couple of years before settling in the area of Great Falls, Montana, in 1892. There he worked to make a living as a full-time artist.

He worked as a cowboy for a number of outfits, and documented the harsh winter of 1886–1887 in a number of watercolors. Russell was working on the O-H Ranch in the Judith Basin of Central Montana at the time. The ranch foreman received a letter from the owner, asking how the cattle herd had weathered the winter. In reply, the foreman sent a postcard-sized watercolor that Russell had painted of a gaunt steer being watched by wolves under a gray winter sky. The ranch owner showed the postcard to friends and business acquaintances, and eventually displayed it in a shop window in Helena, Montana. After this, the artist began to receive commissions for new work. Russell's caption on the sketch, Waiting for a Chinook, became the title of the watercolor. Russell later painted a more detailed version of the scene which became one of his best-known works.

Russell left the sheep ranch and found work with Jake Hoover, a hunter and trapper who had become a rancher. He owned land in the Judith Basin. Russell learned much about the ways of the West from him, and the two men remained lifelong friends. After a brief visit in 1882 to his family in Missouri, Russell returned to Montana, and lived and worked there for the remainder of his life.

Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, and landscapes set in the western United States and in Alberta, Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures. He is known as "the cowboy artist" and was also a storyteller and author. He became an advocate for Native Americans in the west, supporting the bid by landless Chippewa to have a reservation established for them in Montana. In 1916, Congress passed legislation to create the Rocky Boy Reservation.