VERSO
Label, C. M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, Montana
Label, Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York
Label, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, Florida

Roping a Wolf is included in the C. M. Russell Catalogue Raisonné as number CR.PC.248.

According to Russell biographer Dr. Larry Len Peterson, “Cowboys roping a wolf was one of the most popular, action-packed compositions that Russell created over his career. It proved so popular with the public that the images appeared in periodicals and on W. T. Ridgley postcards and calendars. One of the most popular events in the great Western sport of rodeo is calf roping. However, its origin lied in the demanding work on the open range before barbed wire. A tool that was indispensable to the cowboy was the rope or lariat. Successfully restrained, a roped calf could be branded, doctored or neutered. Only the most skilled ropers were called on to partake in this challenging task. Practically, a rope instantly could be transformed into a corral when it was stretched tight by several men. One of the most celebrated magicians with the lariat was Russell’s friend Will Rogers. Even late in life, Russell was seen demonstrating his prowess with his lariat at the ranch of famed actor Harry Carey in southern California.

“In time the roper’s talents were applied to help defeat one of the most formidable menaces on the plains, the gray wolf. The cunning predators were hated and feared for their ability to efficiently kill cattle, which devastated the bottom line. A bounty of up to $5 ($150 in today’s money) was placed on each pelt. The lucrative sport was on a more level playing field when they were roped rather than just shot. Russell, always a champion of the marginalized, found that appealing. In fact, he painted over a dozen oils and watercolors of cowboys roping wolves. His most noted early composition (Roping a Wolf, Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas) was finished in 1890 at the end of the open range. Perhaps his finest oil, also named Roping a Wolf (Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, 2021), was completed in 1904. In Russell’s famed publication, Studies of Western Life (1890), his friend and legendary Montana rancher Granville Stuart wrote, ‘This is a frequent occurrence during the semi-annual roundups. A wolf is startled from some ravine, and instantly with a yell every cowboy nearby spurs his horse and dashes after it at headlong speed, utterly regardless of the broken dangerous ground, loosening their lariats from their saddles as they run.… Often several mis-throws are made, till some lucky fling catches it.’ For twelve years in Montana’s open range, Russell was mainly a nighthawk – a lowly cowboy job of watching the horses overnight while the rest of the cowboys slept – until 1893 when he transitioned from cowboy artist to full-time artist. Even so, he most likely witnessed the cowboy sport more than once.

“With bounties placed on them, wolves for decades were hunted to the point of extinction, much like bison. Nonetheless, they were legendary for their prowess and cunning. Blackfeet legends, for instance, such as those documented in Blackfoot Lodge Tales by George Bird Grinnell (1892) and Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park by James Willard Schultz (1916), tell stories of Blackfeet morphing into part-wolves, as wise wolves taught lessons to their human counterparts.

“The iconic image of the Montana cowboy on the open range was quite short-lived – 1860s to the 1880s. The most famous was Teddy Blue Abbott, one of Russell’s closest friends. His life was one of the inspirations for the creation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. Abbott recalled in those hallowed years that the nobleman of the plains was good-natured and loyal to his outfit, brave but wild, who only feared two things – a respectable woman and not having a horse. He said, ‘The cowboy was a totally different class from these other fellows on the frontier. We was the salt of the earth, anyway in our own estimation, and we had the pride that went with it.’

“Thirty years ago, fourteen gray wolves in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada were captured and released in three locations in Yellowstone National Park – where the last gray wolves were killed to extinction in 1926. The controversial reintroduction was opposed by ranchers and others who feared, just like their ancestors a hundred years earlier, that these apex predators would decimate their livestock. By 2017, with 18,000 wolves inhabiting the United States, the gray wolf was removed from the Endangered Species Act in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Nature’s people are thriving.”

PROVENANCE
Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York
Private collection, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, 1981
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Private collection, Texas
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
George Fenimore and Dale Johnson, Chestertown, Maryland, 1995
Sotheby’s, New York, New York, 2008
T. Boone Pickens Collection, Dallas, Texas
Christie’s, New York, New York, 2020
Private collection, Wyoming

EXHIBITED
C. M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, Montana, ca. 1960-70s
The West: A Selection of Paintings from the Gerald Peters Gallery, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, Florida, 1986
Charles M. Russell: The Artist in His Heyday, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1995

LITERATURE
Charles M. Russell: The Artist in His Heyday, Gerald Peters Gallery, 1995, pp. 25, 70-71, illustrated

• Charles M. Russell’s Past Results

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