American Art Online

American Art Online

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 66. CHARLES MARION RUSSELL | “I CLIMBED FAST, AND STUCK MY HEAD OUT THE TOP WITHOUT LOOKING––AND THEN FROZE SOLID ENOUGH" (SOUTHWESTERN ILLUSTRATION).

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

Lot Closed

March 5, 08:05 PM GMT

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

CHARLES MARION RUSSELL

1864 - 1926

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


signed CM Russell, inscribed with the artist's skull device and dated 1905 (lower left) 

watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper

14 by 17 ⅛ inches

(35.6 by 43.5 cm)


This work is number CR.NE.836 in the online catalogue raisonné of the artist's work at www.russellraisonne.com.

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.