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Lot Essay
During his years as a cowboy in Montana’s Judith Basin, Charles Marion Russell developed his earliest skills as a watercolorist. Hired as a wrangler and night herder, he often carried art supplies in his bedroll—a small pouch or sock filled with brushes and pigments—so that he could paint during quiet shifts on the range. Without formal training, he learned by direct observation, recording the life around him in quick sketches and small watercolors: cowpunchers on patrol, broncs bucking in the dust, Indian scouts moving across the horizon. These improvised studies marked the beginning of Russell’s lifelong effort to depict the world he knew firsthand. That same impulse—an instinct for preserving the rhythms and rituals of range life—finds full expression in Scattering the Riders, a technical and thematic extension of his early range studies that transforms the working routine of the roundup into an enduring image of the open-range West.
In Scattering the Riders, Russell distills his firsthand experience into one of his most expressive portrayals of the Montana range country. The scene unfolds at daybreak, the sky shifting through remarkably well-preserved washes of blue, green, and peach. A band of horsemen gathers before the trail boss, who sits high in his saddle, arm raised to signal orders for the day. Behind them, the prairie fades into violet haze; in the distance, one rider breaks a restless buck while others head out across the open plain. The remaining horses stand quietly, outfitted with ropes, slickers, and saddlebags, their shadows long in the rising dust. In another moment, they will fan out across the plains to locate stray cattle, “scattering” to cover the vast circle of the roundup. Russell renders this moment of suspension with the assurance of a man who had lived it hundreds of times.
By the time Russell painted Scattering the Riders, he was 36 and had spent more than half his life in Montana. The years he had spent on the plains had become the foundation of his art, not only in subject but in execution. His early watercolors were loose and spontaneous, their washes laid swiftly across the paper. Over the course of the 1890s, his command of the medium deepened, marked by a growing sensitivity to atmosphere and structure. By the end of the decade, he had mastered the transparent watercolor technique, balancing broad, luminous passages of sky and terrain with more deliberate, finely controlled detail. In Scattering the Riders, the landscape is rendered in light, translucent layers—paper glowing beneath the pigment, like air itself—while the figures are crisp and deliberate, each cowboy distinct, each horse carefully modeled.
The image owes part of its immediacy to another keen observer of Montana life, photographer Laton Alton Huffman. A contemporary and friend of Russell’s, Huffman built his reputation capturing ranching scenes around Miles City and was widely respected among Western artists, whose paintings occasionally drew upon his imagery. Russell knew Huffman’s work well; his studio contained numerous prints by the photographer, which he studied closely. Although Russell was intimately accustomed to the routines of the roundup, Huffman’s photograph Foreman Telling Off the Men for the Circle—capturing a foreman addressing his riders before they disperse across the plains—provided the compositional source for Scattering the Riders. In the painting, Russell transforms Huffman’s factual record into something more lyrical: the camera’s flat arrangement becomes, under Russell’s brush, an orchestrated harmony of gesture and light. The work retains the authenticity of a documentary image yet expands it into a broader vision of the range, a stage on which the familiarity of work assumes the stature of myth.
What began as a study of ranch work and local practices soon took on a second life through Nancy Russell’s efforts to share her husband’s art with a broader public. Gifted with business sense and an intuitive grasp of promotion, Nancy handled nearly every aspect of Russell’s career—from arranging exhibitions and cultivating collectors to negotiating copyright and press coverage. She also recognized the power of reproduction in shaping public awareness. Under her management, Scattering the Riders became both an image of frontier labor and a vehicle for the artist’s growing national reputation. In 1912, the image was featured on a calendar produced for Bill Rance’s Silver Dollar Saloon in Great Falls, accompanied by the phrase “No More West.” The juxtaposition was fitting: a scene born from the daily realities of ranch life had become a fixture of everyday life itself, reproduced on a calendar that hung in homes and storefronts across the West. A quiet reminder of ordinary rituals already fading into memory.
By the turn of the century, the open range Russell had celebrated was rapidly disappearing—fenced, settled, and modernized. As art historian Rick Stewart observed, “His watercolors depicting the open-range cowboy, the nomadic Indian, or the mighty herds of buffalo became eloquent and moving paeans to a mythic past.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, Montana, 2014, p. 101) Yet Russell never painted as a distant nostalgist. He was chronicling the life he had lived, recalling it with both affection and precision. His scenes may carry the romance of memory, but they remain grounded in experience.
In Scattering the Riders, Russell distills his firsthand experience into one of his most expressive portrayals of the Montana range country. The scene unfolds at daybreak, the sky shifting through remarkably well-preserved washes of blue, green, and peach. A band of horsemen gathers before the trail boss, who sits high in his saddle, arm raised to signal orders for the day. Behind them, the prairie fades into violet haze; in the distance, one rider breaks a restless buck while others head out across the open plain. The remaining horses stand quietly, outfitted with ropes, slickers, and saddlebags, their shadows long in the rising dust. In another moment, they will fan out across the plains to locate stray cattle, “scattering” to cover the vast circle of the roundup. Russell renders this moment of suspension with the assurance of a man who had lived it hundreds of times.
By the time Russell painted Scattering the Riders, he was 36 and had spent more than half his life in Montana. The years he had spent on the plains had become the foundation of his art, not only in subject but in execution. His early watercolors were loose and spontaneous, their washes laid swiftly across the paper. Over the course of the 1890s, his command of the medium deepened, marked by a growing sensitivity to atmosphere and structure. By the end of the decade, he had mastered the transparent watercolor technique, balancing broad, luminous passages of sky and terrain with more deliberate, finely controlled detail. In Scattering the Riders, the landscape is rendered in light, translucent layers—paper glowing beneath the pigment, like air itself—while the figures are crisp and deliberate, each cowboy distinct, each horse carefully modeled.
The image owes part of its immediacy to another keen observer of Montana life, photographer Laton Alton Huffman. A contemporary and friend of Russell’s, Huffman built his reputation capturing ranching scenes around Miles City and was widely respected among Western artists, whose paintings occasionally drew upon his imagery. Russell knew Huffman’s work well; his studio contained numerous prints by the photographer, which he studied closely. Although Russell was intimately accustomed to the routines of the roundup, Huffman’s photograph Foreman Telling Off the Men for the Circle—capturing a foreman addressing his riders before they disperse across the plains—provided the compositional source for Scattering the Riders. In the painting, Russell transforms Huffman’s factual record into something more lyrical: the camera’s flat arrangement becomes, under Russell’s brush, an orchestrated harmony of gesture and light. The work retains the authenticity of a documentary image yet expands it into a broader vision of the range, a stage on which the familiarity of work assumes the stature of myth.
What began as a study of ranch work and local practices soon took on a second life through Nancy Russell’s efforts to share her husband’s art with a broader public. Gifted with business sense and an intuitive grasp of promotion, Nancy handled nearly every aspect of Russell’s career—from arranging exhibitions and cultivating collectors to negotiating copyright and press coverage. She also recognized the power of reproduction in shaping public awareness. Under her management, Scattering the Riders became both an image of frontier labor and a vehicle for the artist’s growing national reputation. In 1912, the image was featured on a calendar produced for Bill Rance’s Silver Dollar Saloon in Great Falls, accompanied by the phrase “No More West.” The juxtaposition was fitting: a scene born from the daily realities of ranch life had become a fixture of everyday life itself, reproduced on a calendar that hung in homes and storefronts across the West. A quiet reminder of ordinary rituals already fading into memory.
By the turn of the century, the open range Russell had celebrated was rapidly disappearing—fenced, settled, and modernized. As art historian Rick Stewart observed, “His watercolors depicting the open-range cowboy, the nomadic Indian, or the mighty herds of buffalo became eloquent and moving paeans to a mythic past.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, Montana, 2014, p. 101) Yet Russell never painted as a distant nostalgist. He was chronicling the life he had lived, recalling it with both affection and precision. His scenes may carry the romance of memory, but they remain grounded in experience.