Charles M. Russell, Word Painter: Letters 1887-1926 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Russell (Author), Brian W. Dippie (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

Charles M. Russell, the 19th-century painter of the American West, was also a skilful storyteller and correspondent. He illustrated his letters with sketches in pen or watercolour, and had a talent for turning a phrase and capturing a scene with words. This book provides an assemblage of Russell's correspondence, and shows that Russell was an artist with words as well as paint. Written to his wife Nancy, to patrons and fellow artists, and to the saloon keepers and cowboys who remained his friends for 40 years, the letters reveal a modest man with a sharp eye for social detail. Each letter is reproduced in facsimile, allowing modern readers to see exactly what Russell's correspondents saw expressed in the artist's own handwriting, with his idiosyncratic spellings and interweaving of colourful sketches and eloquent words on a page.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

One of the two giants of Old West art (the other being Frederic Remington, of course) found it difficult to express his sentiments in words. So Charles M. Russell combined the words in his letters with watercolor pictures. Addressing such friends as Buffalo Bill Cody and Will Rogers, he adorned pages and envelopes alike with caricatures of his cowboy past and vignettes of his present life and travels. In letters to potential clients, most of them solicited by Russell's wife and business manager, Nancy (who, editor Brian W. Dippie speculates, also actually did some of the writing), Russell would submit more finished work. Often the letters would amount to preliminary versions of a more elaborate commission. In the case of a missive to Douglas Fairbanks in which Russell depicted the movie star as the principal hero of The Three Musketeers, the image he mailed inspired the bronze Fairbanks as D'Artagnan. So this selection of the cowboy artist's correspondence, served up in a virtual whale of an oversize tome replete with some 300 colorplates and nearly as many black-and-whites, has the occasional Trivial Pursuitish tidbit in it as well as enough to keep Old West art fans absorbed for hours. Edward Lighthart

From the Inside Flap

Charles M. Russell, Word Painter: Letters 1887-1926, is the most comprehensive collection of Russell's correspondence ever assembled. Letters to his wife Nancy, to patrons and fellow artists, and to the saloonkeepers and cowboys who remained his friends for life reveal a surprisingly modest man. Russell downplayed his own verbal skills, but his letters show that he was an artist with words as well as paint, able to evoke a bygone era or make a shrewd social observation in a few well-chosen sentences. Each letter is reproduced in facsimile, allowing readers to see, in the artist's own handwriting and with his inimitable spelling and punctuation, how Russell cleverly interwove colorful sketches and eloquent words to form a memorable whole.

In the accompanying commentary, Brian Dippie places each of Russell's letters within the broader context of the artist's life and career. Dippie identifies the recipient of each letter and the circumstances that prompted the correspondence, clarifies Russell's references to other friends and acquaintances and, where appropriate, relates events in the letter to Russell's artistic development. Photographs, including many that belonged to the Russells, further illustrate the world that the artist and his friends inhabited.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 444 pages
• Publisher: Amon Carter Museum; First Edition edition (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810937646
• ISBN-13: 978-0810937642
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 11.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #341,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art and Soul of Charles M. Russell, June 2, 2009

By 

Brent R. Swanson "coffee shop inspector" (Crooper, Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Charles M. Russell, Word Painter: Letters 1887-1926 (Hardcover)

Besides creating hundreds of pen & ink illustrations, watercolors, oil paintings, sculptures, and short stories, C.M. Russell also produced around 500 illustrated letters, some of which have been collected previously in the books "Good Medicine" and two editions of "Paper Talk." Dippie's "Word Painter" collects Russell's letters produced between 1887 and 1926, falling a little short of 400 pieces of correspondence.

Russell was not a born writer. He struggled with spelling, syntax, and penmanship. The scrawl that surrounds his miniature sketches and watercolors has none of the apparent ease of his pictorial line. Yet it's clear from his letters that part of his struggle is in finding the right word, which is the labor of the dedicated wordsmith. In his introduction to "Good Medicine," Will Rogers argued that a recipient of a Russell letter cherished the prose more than the accompanying illustration. That may be a bit of overstatement, but the words were surely equal to the pictures. Responding to a birthday card from Josephine Trigg, the aging artist writes: "Old Dad Time trades little that men want he has traded me wrinkels for teeth stiff legs for limber ones but cards like yours tell me that he has left me my friends and for that great kindness I forgive him." Grammar and punctuation could be added to that, but it could not improve it.

Russell's letters contain some of his most spontaneous and heartfelt artistry, where words and pictures combine to express his despair over the encroachment of real estate "development," or to let loose with a humorous observation or anecdote that belies the frown seen in so many of his formal portraits.

Dippie's volume is not only a portable museum of Russell's correspondence, but also of Russell's family, friends, and the times which influenced and shaped the man and his work. This is an indispensable collection for any enthusiast of this artist or of western art in general. Though some of the reproductions are small, the color reproduction is a big improvement over "Good Medicine" and "Paper Talk."

Russell's masterpieces may be the watercolors and oils that hang in museums and private collections, but the priceless heart and wit of the artist lives on in these letters.