2025 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction100 / 120 • View Catalog •
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A copy of the February 1948 issue of The Cattleman will accompany the lot.
Russell authority Dr. Brian W. Dippie wrote, “If Canada ever experienced a Wild West, it occurred before the arrival of the North-West Mounted Police in 1874. But Phil Weinard insisted that western Canada ‘never had a “Wild West”’ as that term was understood across the line. ‘We had our quota of would-be bad men here,’ he wrote, ‘but their notions were never realized except in the bar room. The real western man … was as a rule an amiable, quiet, law abiding citizen who minded his own business and looked to others to do the same.’
“Certainly the Mounties were in control by 1888 when Russell summered in Alberta, and bar-rooms were in short supply, for Canada’s North-West was officially dry. The Police effectively enforced prohibition to the considerable annoyance of the growing population of white settlers. It is hard to imagine that Russell cottoned to a regime that has been described as a ‘benevolent despotism.’ After all, he had a cowboy’s disdain for the United States army, and once asserted, ‘I never painted a soldier in my life.’ Yet he obviously shared the respect for the North-West Mounted Police prevalent on the Alberta range.
“Five oil paintings, two water colours (The Talk Paper [1901] and The King’s Scout [1903]), and several pen and ink drawings by Russell pay tribute to the Mounted Police as dispensers of a firm but fair brand of justice. He showed them levelling their rifles but never firing them. Four of his five oils showed the Police making arrests or escorting prisoners, and while Russell instinctively sympathized with Indians and outlaws, not the forces of law and order, each painting expresses his admiration for the scarlet-coated police.”
PROVENANCE
A. T. McDannald, Houston, Texas, by 1948
Private collection, Texas, ca. 1960
Present owner, by descent
LITERATURE
The Cattleman, vol. XXXIV, no. 9, February 1948, cover, illustrated
