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Lot Essay
Painted circa 1894-98, Charles Marion Russell’s Indian Attack revives a scene that had all but passed into myth, though it remained sharply etched in the memories of those who had lived it—including the Native Americans with whom the artist regularly interacted during this period of his career. During his early years in Montana’s Judith Basin, Russell moved in and out of Blackfeet, Arapaho, Kootenai, and Crow communities with uncommon ease; in 1888 he lived among the Bloods (Kainai Nation), hunting with tribal members, learning their language, and absorbing the meanings encoded in their clothing, weapons, and horse gear. Those lessons became the invisible architecture beneath nearly every picture he produced of the Native American experience.
The urgency Russell brings to Indian Attack grows from that personal history. The image captures a raiding party in full gallop, riders bent low over their plunging horses, the air vibrating with motion. The bright slashes of gunfire, the flare of patterned blankets, and the overcast horizon heighten the sense of forward drive. The subject is less an illustration of a specific event than Russell’s attempt to channel the speed, force, and dignity of a way of life he knew was slipping away. As Dr. John Ewers observed, “At the time of Russell’s extended stay among Blood Indians in 1888 the lifeways of those Indians had [already] changed markedly… Russell recognized that the picturesque glory days of buffalo hunting and raiding were gone. But those days were not so far behind: even middle-aged members of the tribe could remember buffalo days well and could tell many fascinating stories of tribal life.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, 2014, p. 69) Indian Attack is built on those memories and oral histories—recollected, expanded, and distilled into action.
Russell’s reverence for Indigenous culture also placed him within a longer tradition of American art—one he had absorbed since childhood in St. Louis. Growing up in a city that served as the eastern gate to the West, he would have encountered the early generation of artist-explorers who traveled west to document Indigenous nations for eastern audiences. George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Alfred Jacob Miller, John Mix Stanley, Seth Eastman, and George Caleb Bingham likely all left their mark in St. Louis on their journeys, and the city buzzed with their images and ideas. Steeped in this artistic traffic between East and West, Russell absorbed their lessons almost instinctively, long before he set out to develop a vision of his own.
Catlin’s portrayals of Plains cultures—their rituals, visual vocabularies, and horsemanship—cast the deepest early shadow on Russell. Catlin did far more than sketch; he built a visual and written archive that later artists, Russell among them, instinctively drew from. Carl Wimar also cast a long influence over Russell. Trained in the Düsseldorf tradition, Wimar brought a theatrical, European-inflected drama to scenes of the American West, an approach Russell admired deeply, once writing that he “knew the Indian” and even confessing, “I wish I could paint like he did.” (Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 2003, p. 27)
Seth Eastman, too, entered this lineage through his finely detailed illustrations for Henry Schoolcraft’s study of Native cultures. As Anne Morand observed, “Eastman and Russell both treated one subject that Catlin did not: Indian attacks on white settlers moving west… Other artists, including Wimar, painted Indian attacks, but not in the form that Russell adopted, which became the cinematic norm of the 20th century.” (The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell, Norman, Oklahoma, 2009, p. 143) For Russell, however, these scenes were less about menace than momentum: his emphasis fell on the riders themselves—the speed, the churn of the earth, the choreography of the charge—rather than on the emigrant wagons receding into haze.
Together, these predecessors offered Russell a foundation: Catlin’s cultural insight, Wimar’s dramatic structure, Eastman’s precision. What he forged from them was wholly his own—faster, freer, and animated by the lived experience of someone who understood the world these artists had only passed through. Yet what ultimately bound these influences together was Russell’s conviction that Indigenous life possessed a depth and moral weight far greater than any single anecdote or inherited trope could convey.
Behind the momentum, the theater, and the inherited visual vocabulary stood a larger truth—Russell’s belief in the cultural and moral weight of Indigenous life. Few have captured that conviction better than Russell expert Peter Hassrick, who wrote, "That Indian, symbolizing the Rousseauian natural man, was the single most significant symbol of the West for Russell. He found their way of life far more profound than any of the ephemeral proficiencies of his fellow cowboys, and their traditions represented timeless and universal values that only the arts could preserve. Civilization had crushed the plains culture. Despite the fact that the artist's vocation as a cowboy had indirectly caused the final depletion of the bison, Russell followed a self-enlightened mandate to celebrate and preserve the Indian image as noble. Just as he struggled to humanize the cowboy, he strove to idealize the Indian." (Charles M. Russell, New York, 1989, p. 50) Indian Attack channels that mandate. It is a tribute to a world Russell fought to honor—alive with motion, memory, and meaning.
The urgency Russell brings to Indian Attack grows from that personal history. The image captures a raiding party in full gallop, riders bent low over their plunging horses, the air vibrating with motion. The bright slashes of gunfire, the flare of patterned blankets, and the overcast horizon heighten the sense of forward drive. The subject is less an illustration of a specific event than Russell’s attempt to channel the speed, force, and dignity of a way of life he knew was slipping away. As Dr. John Ewers observed, “At the time of Russell’s extended stay among Blood Indians in 1888 the lifeways of those Indians had [already] changed markedly… Russell recognized that the picturesque glory days of buffalo hunting and raiding were gone. But those days were not so far behind: even middle-aged members of the tribe could remember buffalo days well and could tell many fascinating stories of tribal life.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, 2014, p. 69) Indian Attack is built on those memories and oral histories—recollected, expanded, and distilled into action.
Russell’s reverence for Indigenous culture also placed him within a longer tradition of American art—one he had absorbed since childhood in St. Louis. Growing up in a city that served as the eastern gate to the West, he would have encountered the early generation of artist-explorers who traveled west to document Indigenous nations for eastern audiences. George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Alfred Jacob Miller, John Mix Stanley, Seth Eastman, and George Caleb Bingham likely all left their mark in St. Louis on their journeys, and the city buzzed with their images and ideas. Steeped in this artistic traffic between East and West, Russell absorbed their lessons almost instinctively, long before he set out to develop a vision of his own.
Catlin’s portrayals of Plains cultures—their rituals, visual vocabularies, and horsemanship—cast the deepest early shadow on Russell. Catlin did far more than sketch; he built a visual and written archive that later artists, Russell among them, instinctively drew from. Carl Wimar also cast a long influence over Russell. Trained in the Düsseldorf tradition, Wimar brought a theatrical, European-inflected drama to scenes of the American West, an approach Russell admired deeply, once writing that he “knew the Indian” and even confessing, “I wish I could paint like he did.” (Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 2003, p. 27)
Seth Eastman, too, entered this lineage through his finely detailed illustrations for Henry Schoolcraft’s study of Native cultures. As Anne Morand observed, “Eastman and Russell both treated one subject that Catlin did not: Indian attacks on white settlers moving west… Other artists, including Wimar, painted Indian attacks, but not in the form that Russell adopted, which became the cinematic norm of the 20th century.” (The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell, Norman, Oklahoma, 2009, p. 143) For Russell, however, these scenes were less about menace than momentum: his emphasis fell on the riders themselves—the speed, the churn of the earth, the choreography of the charge—rather than on the emigrant wagons receding into haze.
Together, these predecessors offered Russell a foundation: Catlin’s cultural insight, Wimar’s dramatic structure, Eastman’s precision. What he forged from them was wholly his own—faster, freer, and animated by the lived experience of someone who understood the world these artists had only passed through. Yet what ultimately bound these influences together was Russell’s conviction that Indigenous life possessed a depth and moral weight far greater than any single anecdote or inherited trope could convey.
Behind the momentum, the theater, and the inherited visual vocabulary stood a larger truth—Russell’s belief in the cultural and moral weight of Indigenous life. Few have captured that conviction better than Russell expert Peter Hassrick, who wrote, "That Indian, symbolizing the Rousseauian natural man, was the single most significant symbol of the West for Russell. He found their way of life far more profound than any of the ephemeral proficiencies of his fellow cowboys, and their traditions represented timeless and universal values that only the arts could preserve. Civilization had crushed the plains culture. Despite the fact that the artist's vocation as a cowboy had indirectly caused the final depletion of the bison, Russell followed a self-enlightened mandate to celebrate and preserve the Indian image as noble. Just as he struggled to humanize the cowboy, he strove to idealize the Indian." (Charles M. Russell, New York, 1989, p. 50) Indian Attack channels that mandate. It is a tribute to a world Russell fought to honor—alive with motion, memory, and meaning.