Russell historian Rick Stewart wrote, “In March 1921, the newly completed model of Weapons of the Weak was among six displayed at the Kanst Art Galleries on South Hill Street in Los Angeles. A critic for the Los Angeles Times praised ‘the perfection in the composition in the mother bear, who has seized her two cubs in her arms – is it arms? – to defend them from the dangerous quills of an approaching fretful porcupine. What action, and what consummate skill in the delineation of bruin life and character.’ An early photograph from Nancy Russell’s estate with her handwriting on the reverse shows the original model for the sculpture. The model still had not been cast in bronze by December, when a writer for the Rocky Mountain News, who saw it at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, pronounced it ‘perhaps one of his best.’ Likely the models were being hand carried to New York to be cast at Roman Bronze Works.

“The bronze version was first exhibited with six others at the Kanst Art Galleries in March 1922, where it again drew notice in the press. According to a receipt dated March 27, 1922, and signed by Nancy Russell in Los Angeles, John M. Phillips of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, purchased one copy of the bronze for $225. This bronze, the earliest documented example of the subject, is now in the collection of the Museum of Western Art in Denver. After the Kanst showing, the bronze was exhibited over the next two years in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington.

Describing the subject Nancy Russell wrote, “The mother bear with her two cubs has climbed up on a wobbly rock to safety. The cubs are holding on to their mother as they watch a porcupine go by. One can fairly hear the mountain mother tell her children to be quiet until the little enemy with his sharp needles passes by.”

PROVENANCE
John Phillips, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1922
Margaret Phillips Chalfant, 1953, by descent
Robert J. Trombetta, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1981
Private collection, Wyoming, 1989

LITERATURE
Rick Stewart, Charles M. Russell, Sculptor, Amon Carter Museum, 1994, pp. 226-29, example illustrated
Charles M. Russell: The Artist in His Heyday, Gerald Peters Gallery, 1995, p. 126, example illustrated

• Charles M. Russell’s Past Results
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