According to Rick Stewart, “As noted in the catalogue entry for A Bronc Twister, the term ‘weaver’ refers to a specific action of a bucking horse-something Russell would have known and fully understood when he conceived it in sculpture. The same is true of The Bucker and the Buckaroo, which accurately depicts the behavior of a horse known to seasoned riders as a ‘sunfisher.’ According to Ramon Adams, “‘Sunfishing’ was a term used when a horse twisted his body into a crescent … or, in other words, when he seemed to try to touch the ground with first one shoulder and then the other, letting the sunlight hit his belly. Such a horse was called a ‘sunfisher.’” Russell, who could depict the myriad contortions of a bucking horse with consummate skill, claimed to have some firsthand experience with the subject. He once explained to Will James, ‘I never got to be a bronc rider but in my youthful days wanted to be and while that want lasted, I had a fine chance to study hoss enatimy from under and over. The under was a view a teripan gets. The over while I hoverd at the end of a McCarty rope was like an eagle sees-grand but dam scary for folks without wings. And, what I wanted was the saddle horn and it was far, far below me. Maby you’v been thair, looking down on a hoss with plenty of legs but no head. They ust to play peek-a boo with me lots.’”

PROVENANCE
David “Sonny” and Leah Ray Werblin, Rumson, New Jersey
Private collection, Texas, 2000
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, Nevada, 2015
Private collection, Beaver Creek, Colorado

LITERATURE
Rick Stewart, Charles M. Russell, Sculptor, Amon Carter Museum, 1994, pp. 268-73, example illustrated
Larry Len Peterson, The American West Reimagined: Gems from the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, 2021, p. 91, illustrated

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