Cowboy Bargaining for an Indian Girl

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, lower left: C. M. Russell / (calf's head) / 1895

Label

Although often praised for the “authenticity” of his works, Charles Marion Russell often combined historical realities with his own nostalgic imaginings. The resulting visual narratives blur the lines between reality and fiction and, in the case of this painting, perpetuate harmful stereotypes about the availability and assumed promiscuity of Indigenous women. Furthermore, these depictions flatten the experiences of Native women, who played important social and economic roles as interlocutors, mediators, and traders through interracial relationships.

Also known as “the Cowboy Artist,” Russell was born into a wealthy St. Louis family but left as a teenager, becoming a horse wrangler in Montana. Before the tourist economy and railroads permeated the region, Russell made a career—supported by his wife and manager Nancy Cooper—creating paintings and sculptures that romanticized frontier life in the “Old West.”

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

HIST 6, NAS 30, History of the American West, Ben Madley, Winter 2012

SART 31/SART 72, Painting II/III, Jennifer Caine, Winter 2020

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 31, Myth of the Noble Savage, Meghan Rice, Class of 2006, Special Projects Intern, Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 3-May 21, 2006.

Art of the American West, Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut, January 15 June 15, 2002.

Charles M. Russell: The Masterworks in Oil and Bronze, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, October 17, 2009-January 10, 2010; The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 6, -May 2, 2010; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, June 6-August 29, 2010.

Director's Choice, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 10-July 10, 1966.

Images of the West: Selections from the Permanent Collection, MALS 190, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 15-August 28, 1994.

Introduction to the History of Art II, 1500 to present, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, ArtH2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 24-March 14, 2004.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–July 22, 2022.

Publication History

John Taliaferro, Charles M. Russell, Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.

Peter H. Hassrick, Remington, Russell, and the Language of Western Art, Washington, D.C.: Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 2000, ill, p. 97, number 66.

Heather Fryer, ed., Cowboys and Indians, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts: MacMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 2002, 113 pp., Fig. 12, B&W ill. p. 37.

Joan Carpenter Troccoli, editor, The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell; A Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009, ill. p. 73.

Provenance

Sold to J. Shirley Austin, Ligonier, Pennsylvania, 1932; given to present collection, 1961.

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