This first comprehensive biography of Charles M. Russell examines the colorful life and times of Montana’s famed Cowboy Artist. Born to an affluent St. Louis family in 1864, young Russell read thrilling tales of the West and filled sketchbooks with imagined frontier scenes. At sixteen he left home and headed west to become a cowboy. In Montana Territory he consorted with cowpunchers, Indians, preachers, saloon keepers, and prostitutes, while celebrating the waning American frontier’s glory days in some 4,000 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Before his death in 1926, Russell saw the world change dramatically, and the West he loved passed into legend. By then he was revered as one of the country’s ranking Western artist with works displayed in the finest galleries, his romantic vision of the Old West forever shaping our own. Taliaferro reveals the man behind the myth in his multifaceted complexity: extraordinarily gifted, self-effacing, charming, mischievous, and playful, a friend to rough frontier denizens and Hollywood stars alike. The author also explores Russell’s controversial partnership with his fiery young wife, Nancy, whose ambition and business savvy helped establish Russell as one of America’s most popular artists.

Charles M. Russell is the most beloved artist of the American West. This work, the result of a decade of research and scholarship, features 170 color reproductions of his greatest works and six essays by Russell experts and scholars. Each book contains a unique key code granting access to the more than 4,000 works created and signed by Russell. Visit the website at www.russellraisonne.com.

"Nancy worked on this biography until her death in 1940 without ever quite finishing it. Tom Petrie and Brian Dippie have collaborated on brining what she did finish into print, with side-bars, photographs, and artwork to amplify her text. [This book] will delight all those who love Charles M. Russell and his enduring vision of "the West that has passed.""--inside cover.

He was a master painter and sculptor whose works have permeated the American scene like no other Western artist before or since. For the first time, C.M. Russell, Legacy tells the amazing story of the rise of Montana's cowboy artist to national prominence by presenting over a thousand illustrations of his published works, collectibles, and photographs.

In the decades bracketing the turn of the twentieth century, Charles M. Russell depicted the American West in a fresh, personal, and deeply moving way. This handsome book--a companion volume to the acclaimed Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonné, edited by B. Byron Price--showcases many of the artist's best-known works and chronicles the sources and evolution of his style.