Charlie Russell Charlie Russell was born March 19, 1864 in Oak Hill Missouri, an event that was to be nationally recognized a century later by a commemorative U.S. postage stamp in his honor. The Russell family was one of great prominence in what is now St. Louis. His great grandfather had been Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri Territory. Russell was not a good student and his parents tried in vain to discipline him by sending him to a military school in New Jersey. After one semester they gave up and that was the end of his formal education. His parents allowed him to spend a summer at a family friend's ranch in Judith Basin, Montana. This was in 1880, a few days before his 16th birthday. He fell in love with this hunter's paradise and it would be his home for the next 46 years. While a night herder for 11 years, Russell had his days free to paint and sketch. The rest of the crew would be working the herd, branding, or breaking horses, so there was never ending inspiration for the emerging “Cowboy Artist.” His first (and largest up to that time) oil painting exhibited outside Montana, was shown at the St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall Association art show in 1886. His first paintings to be reproduced in a Montana newspaper were in the Helena Journal in July 1891, but with no mention of the artist's name. In 1893 he gave up life as a cowboy and returned to St. Louis for a visit. While there he was commissioned by a Montana ranch owner to do several paintings. He returned to Cascade to fill the commission. He began to make a living as an artist from that point. In 1896, Russell married Nancy Cooper, 14 years his junior. She was a strong willed woman and encouraged her husband to write short stories. She demanded such high prices she earned the name “Nancy the Robber.” Charles Marion Russell was one of the few artists to enjoy fame and wealth in his lifetime, especially having no formal art education. He died on October 24, 1926, in Great Falls where he is buried today.

Biography with permission from AskArt.com

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