The Masters Capture the West

The Russell and Scottsdale Art auctions gaveled up top dollars from collectors of Western classics.

The War Party (shown here in detail) was painted by Russell just after his marriage to Nancy Cooper, who deftly managed his career, turning him into an internationally known artist. Over the years, War Party was exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Courtesy C.M. Russell Museum

One of the best-loved Western painters is Charles Russell, known for his realistic and action-filled depictions. The Great Falls, Montana, museum bearing his name, and where his studio can be seen, held its annual fundraising auction on March 16, 2024. That auction, titled The Russell, garnered the highest bids for works by him. The biggest winner at the auction was Russell’s painting The War Party, which pulled in a final bid of $2,570,000. Created in 1886, the painting was based on his experiences with the Blackfeet in Montana.

Birger Sandzen’s Summer in the Mountains illustrates the Swedish immigrant’s affection for the Rocky Mountains, his frequent refuge from the summer heat of his home in Kansas. Courtesy Scottsdale Art Auction

Russell later drew on his time with the Blackfeet for five illustrations he produced for the publication Indian Why Stories. That lot sold for $497,250. Russell’s1906 watercolor Leading the Circle, which sold for $643,500, was inspired by his experience as a cowboy during a roundup in 1887. While Russell is not as well-known as Frederic Remington for his bronzes, a 1914 sculpture of a medicine man, Smoking with the Spirit of the Buffalo, sold for $99,450 at the Russell.

Based on Charles Russell’s experiences in Montana, Leading the Circle illustrates a group of cowboys riding out to sort cattle during a roundup. Courtesy C.M. Russell Museum

At the Scottsdale Art Auction, held a month later, another Russell bronze, A Bronc Twister, brought $222,300. At that price it exceeded Remington’s The Cheyenne, which earned a top bid of $128,700 in Scottsdale. Works by Russell’s contemporaries also sold well at the Scottsdale auction. Berger Sandzen’s landscape Summer in the Mountains sold for $280,800 and Nicolai Fechin’s portrait Carmelita pulled in $292,500. Kachina Doll Maker, by Evanger Irving Couse, took $245,700. Sandzen and Fechin, both European immigrants, quickly fell in love with the American West. Michigan native Couse was also captivated by the West and its peoples.

William R. Leigh wrote that hunting in the Rockies “takes knowledge, sure feet and good lungs.” Those qualities are captured in Leigh’s carefully detailed work on the horses and rider in the foreground of Pack Trip (Rough Going). Courtesy Scottsdale Art Auction

Couse and Fechin moved to Taos, where their homes are now art museums. Sandzen moved to Lindsborg, Kansas, and taught art at a local college. Today a museum there features his art. Like Russell, Fechin, Couse and Sandzen, William R. Leigh traveled to the American West and was fascinated by it. But, unlike them, he did not move west. Instead he chose to live in New York City.

Russian artist Nicolai Fechin was already known internationally for his portraiture when he immigrated to the United States after the Russian Revolution. He painted this portrait, titled Carmelita, after he settled in Taos in 1927. Courtesy Scottsdale Art Auction

After his death, his studio did end up in the West, now residing at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. Leigh’s Pack Trip (A Rough Going), which took $225,000 in Scottsdale, illustrates a man toiling through the Rockies on a hunt for bighorn sheep. Both The Russell and the Scottsdale Art Auction had plenty of excellent pieces by living artists. But it was the work by Charles Russell and his contemporaries that commanded the most attention…and much of the money.