CHARLES MARION RUSSELL | “I CLIMBED FAST, AND STUCK MY HEAD OUT THE TOP WITHOUT LOOKING––AND THEN FROZE SOLID ENOUGH" (SOUTHWESTERN ILLUSTRATION)

The artist

Harry E. Maule, Garden City, New York (acquired from the above)

Private collection (by descent)

By descent to the present owner

Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, n.d. (on loan)

Manchester, New Hampshire, The Currier Gallery of Art, Heirlooms: Historical Art and Decorative Arts from New Hampshire Collectors, September-October 1985, no. 37, n.p.

The present work was intended as an illustration for Stewart Edward White’s "Arizona Nights," which was serialized in McClure’s Magazine in 1906. Charles Marion Russell illustrated the first two installments in January and February, while N.C. Wyeth completed the ensuing editions. It was likely intended for the January installment as the scene corresponds to an excerpt from White's text, which the magazine would have used to title the illustration.

This work was acquired directly from the artist by Harry E. Maule, a book publishing executive and editor, who was well-acquainted with the Russells. Maule worked closely with Russell's wife, Nancy Cooper Russell, when he edited the artist's publications Trails Plowed Under: Stories of the Old West and Good Medicine: Memories of the Real West for Doubleday. Maule was a descendant of frontiersman and was a specialist in Western Americana. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in Denver, Mexico, and in also New York where he interviewed Mark Twain. He was a friend of and editor for Sinclair Lewis, the American writer well-known for his influential satirical novels Main Street and Babbitt. The present illustration has since descended within Maule's family and was unknown to Russell scholars until 2019.