Art: Charlie Goes to Washington

For 28 years Montana’s candidate for the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall has been its late, beloved cowboy artist, Charles M. Russell, famed for his bucking broncs, whooping Indians, buffalo hunts and roundup scenes, which recorded the disappearing Wild West with vigor and validity. But it seemed that Charlie would never get to Washington; somebody always cut him off at the pass.

The first attempt to honor the cowboy painter came a cropper in 1931 when his widow telegraphed Montana’s governor that the winning model of the seven submitted in a competition for a statue was “unlike the real Charlie Russell.” World War II halted a second effort. Meantime, Charlie’s friends and admirers —including just about every hard-rock miner, drive-in carhop and state legislator in the Treasure State—dug into their jeans for $75,000 to build a museum in Great Falls to house his works, anted up again to buy a collection of Russell paintings valued at $300,000.

Early this year the Montana Fine Arts

Commission decided to get Charlie to Washington or bust, issued a statewide invitation for sculptors to submit models, then called in three out-of-state judges (one of them an old personal friend of Cowboy Russell) to judge the five entries. Last week the judges announced their unanimous choice: a standing figure, palette in hand, staring Montana-like into the distance (see cut). The sculptor: John B. Weaver, curator of the Montana Historical Society. Said the judges: “It captures the spirit of Charles M. Russell, and is worthy of representing him to posterity.” At last the trail to Washington seemed to be clear.

But Charlie’s old friends could not help pointing out that the whole long struggle would have struck the cowboy artist as a lot of tomfoolery. As to how Charlie would have felt if he had known he was going to make his last stand cooped up in the company of 42 heroes of other states, e.g., Massachusetts’ Sam Adams, Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, Texas’ Sam Houston and Pennsylvania’s Robert Fulton.* not even the cussingest barkeep west of Helena could say.

* The only other resident of Statuary Hall who qualifies as an artist (he painted portraits before he developed the steamboat).