Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist [Hardcover]

John Taliaferro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

A fascinating biography brings to life the man behind the cowboy artist--a wrangler during the glory years of the open range and the lover of a fiery woman half his age--and his rise to fame with the help of the robber barons he despised.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charlie Russell, whose art combined documentation and romance, played a large part in establishing cowboy culture. Son of one of the leading families in St. Louis, he had dime-novel fantasies about the West. In 1880, aged 16, Russell left home for Montana Territory to be a cowboy. For the next 15 years, he led a devil-may-care existence as a wrangler, drinking heavily, womanizing, pleading for credit. Journalist Taliaferro brings the artist and the frontier to life in this sparkling biography. By 1887, Russell had gained local recognition for his art but was reluctant to push his career. All changed when he married a fiery young woman half his age in 1896. Wife Nancy became his promoter and business agent, arranging exhibitions and sales nationwide. By all accounts, Russell was a charmer; much of his success as a painter, says the author, must be attributed to his appealing personality. He died in 1926. This is an important book for Western buffs.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

When he left St. Louis to rusticate in Montana in 1880, Russell was only 16 years old and entranced by a West whose archetypes were then jelling into the stereotypes familiar to us today. With a gregarious sense of adventure and budding artistic talent, he stayed there for a lifetime, which, surprisingly enough, is here first given the cradle-to-grave treatment. A debut author, Taliaferro writes like a veteran, going beyond chronicle to plumb his subject's inner, emotional life, embedded in the atmosphere of his times. Montana in the 1880s, though no longer a frontier, was plenty wild, and Taliaferro engagingly relates Russell's ventures to experience the figures in his imagination: cowboys and Indians, buffalo and bears. An easy maker of friends (with the cowboys), he met them, camped and drank with them, and put them down first as doodles, eventually as paintings. A better boon companion than savvy art marketeer, Russell didn't taste success until his marriage to a possessive woman his chums resentfully called the "little robber," but Nancy gave Charlie the necessary push out of the saloons and into the galleries. Whatever Russell's status in art history--detractors debunk his work for sentimentalism; enthusiasts value its evocative panoramas--his companionable character is seamlessly restored by Taliaferro. Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316831905
• ISBN-13: 978-0316831901
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "THE" COWBOY ARTIST, September 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist (Hardcover)

Art critics spend much time arguing about the value of western art and as to whether it can really be classified as art at all. Some of the more snobby critics attempt to discredit western painters by referring to them as "illustrators" as if that changes anything. They argue that if an artist is commissioned by other than the loftiest of patrons or if their work is used primarily to illuminate a story then their art can only be classified as illustration and not as fine art.

As an art student I argued this one ad nauseam with my art professors. And invariably the work of Charles Marion Russell, my favorite ARTIST - period - would arise. But that's enough about small-minded art professors and their unwillingness to accept art wherever they find it.

The work of Charles Marion Russell (hereafter CM Russell) is accepted by thousands as arguably the best of the western genre. It remains the standard against which all other western pieces are judged. Russell also was an accomplished western wit who drew and kept the fast friendship of the king of western wit, Will Rogers. In his book Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist, John Taliaferro not only discusses the art achievements of Russell but also provides a biography that paints the life of the artist and the west Russell knew so well in the most vivid colors possible. And indeed CM Russell was the most colorful of characters.

Read this book and I'll bet you will at least become the owner of a CM Russell print and at most plan a pilgrimage to Great Falls to visit CM Russell's museum, studio and home.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WELL WRITTEN AND INFORMATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL, March 17, 2008

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist (Hardcover)

This is a very well written biography of an American Original, Charles M. Russell, cowboy, artist, story teller and someone you would probably like to hang around with for a bit. I have always been rather fond of Western Art, in general, and Russell's work in particular. I have, from time to time read articles on the life of this truly individual man but have before now, been unable to read a complete work on his life that I could give credit to for being valid. John Taliaferro has treated the artist rather fairly as well as the artist's wife Nancy, who I have always suspected has not been appreciated for just what she did for her husband. Truth be told, I doubt if Charles M. Russell would have ever been the artist he was without her. It is good that the author has given credit were credit is due. I have also had some problems with the separation of truth from myth. The author has done a very nice job of this with this work.

This book is a bit more than just the story of the life on one man though. If you pay attention, you can find a pretty good history of the evolution of the Western Artist here, and the role he played in this particular genre of art. I say art, because I believe that is just what it is. I realize that there has been, is, and probably always will be the artist/illustrated argument being pitched back and forth with each new generation of artists and art teachers. Personally, I am one of those people who looks himself in the mirror and says "if I call it art, then by God, it is art." This of course my personal standard and I am sure there are many who would disagree. And that is the way it should be. The purpose of this biography was not to establish the answer to this question one way or another. Let the argument rage on...it just makes things more interesting.

The author of this work does have a very readable style, has well foot noted his sources, and when he simply does not know something, says as such. When he speculates, he specifically states that he is doing so. Now I will warn the reader that the author, Mr. Taliaferro, does love his Thesaurus, aggressively uses it, and does display a quirky sort of vocabulary. I personally like this, as I love words, but some readers may find it just a bit distracting. This is a very minor problem though, if even a problem it is.

I feel it is important to understand our art if we are to understand ourselves as a society and also feel that we need to know and understand those who are able to create this art. Works such as this help greatly with this understanding and by reading them, simply makes life a bit more enjoyable. I know that I will certainly look with new eyes now, each time I view a Russell painting or sculpture after reading this work. A well written biography, informative, fun and a pleasure to read!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A factual, fair and fascinating account, December 2, 2007

By 

Mary Clare "author, To the Ends of the Earth:... (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist (Paperback)

John Taliaferro does a great job of separating fact from legend in this well-written, engaging account of Charlie Russell's life. Russell wasn't above embellishing his western credentials (he never, in fact, lived with the Indians, as he once claimed), but Taliaferro shows us that he did have genuine cowboy credentials, cutting his chops over years of nighthawking on the Montana range.

This biography is fair to Russell's wife, Nancy, who was often vilified by Russell's friends for her money-hungry, status-conscious ways. Nancy was a young, uneducated woman who came from dirt-poor circumstances. She took on the sole responsibility for managing her husband's art career. If Nancy made a few enemies over the years, she deserves credit for taking Charlie from being a cowpoke selling his sketches for $25 to a world-renowned artist.