2024 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 246301 / 373 • View Catalog •
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According to Russell authority Dr. Larry Len Peterson, “This unicorn is the most famous birthday gift Russell ever created. Russell is the most beloved Western American artist for a reason. For example, even though he was the highest paid artist in the country, he still made time to create gifts for his old friends. One was his Silver Dollar Saloon drinking buddy Bud Cowan. Cowan was married to famed novelist Bertha M. Bower, and they frequently visited the Russells when Charlie and Nancy were wintering in southern California. Russell had illustrated a number of Bower’s novels. Cowan recollected, ‘I went over to visit Charley Russell in Nov. 1920. He had rented a place over in Pasadena, he fixed up a sort of a studio and was working on a job of making a horse for book-ends, of course I admired them and he said ‘I’ll make you a pair for your next birthday.’ I said, ‘Charley, I’d rather have your picture on a pair of bookends than a horse.’ Well, we all had a laugh and that ended it as far as I was concerned…. Charley and I went out and sat down in the grass and had a big time talking of old times, we left the two women in the house because some of our range stories didn’t take so good with the women. My wife and I went back home and nothing more was said about my birthday until it came around [January 28, 1921]. Then my wife brought me those bookends and told me that they were from her and Charley.’ The outcome was Russell’s most endearing birthday gift. Among bookend markings, the ‘Flying U’ brand is a tribute to Bower’s famous novel, Chip of the Flying U (1904), illustrated by Russell, which was made into several film versions. Cowan was the model for the hero of the story.”
PROVENANCE
Bud Cowan, 1921
Homer Britzman (owner of Nancy Russell’s home in Pasadena, California), 1939
Earl C. Adams (Nancy Russell’s estate attorney), 1957
Adams Family Trust, 1986
Private collection, 1996
LITERATURE
Rick Stewart, Charles M. Russell, Sculptor, Amon Carter Museum, 1994, pp. 119, 195-96, illustrated
Larry Len Peterson, Charles M. Russell, Legacy: Printed and Published Works of Montana’s Cowboy Artist, C. M. Russell Museum and Falcon Publishing, 1999, p. 195, illustrated
Larry Len Peterson, Charles M. Russell, Photographing the Legend: A Biography in Words and Pictures, University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, p. 202, illustrated
Larry Len Peterson, Blackfeet John L. “Cutapuis” Clarke and the Silent Call of Glacier National Park: America’s Wood Sculptor (2nd ed.), The Clarke Gallery, 2024, p. 344, illustrated
