Each era in the history of the West has produced a small group of artists who have served to define the Western art genre and whose works have struck a particular chord with the public. Today, the market for Western art continues to boom and the Cowboy Artists of America have made the biggest contribution to this phenomenon. The most prestigious and widely recognized group of Western artists in the country, the CAA has defined the parameters of Western art, dictating style, subject matter, and market value. This large-format book features the artwork of more than fifty current and past members of this elite organization of painters and sculptors. Their subjects range from mountain men, early settlers, and Native Americans, to cowboy life of both the old West and the contemporary ranch. The Western landscape's defining character provides an underlying force throughout.

The Sons of Charlie Russell commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Cowboy Artists of America. The history of these artists comes alive in this book's essays and photographs and in beautiful images of their works. --cover flap.

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.

A catalogue produced by Tacoma Art Museum for the traveling exhibition of thesame name co-organized by the Booth Western Art Museum, the National Cowboy &Western Heritage Museum, and Tacoma Art Museum.

- Presents a selection of works in the Petrie Institute of Western American Art collectionThis volume collects a selection of works of art produced in the western United States belonging to the collection of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art housed in the Denver Art Museum. This collection is one of the richest and most substantial in the world on this subject, thanks to its outstanding bronze sculptures, early modern works, and contributions from the artistic communities of Taos and Santa Fe. The central theme of the book is the period stretching from the beginning of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. More than 200 pages of portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, and depictions of a still-intact wilderness make evident the diversity of the collection. The narrative proceeds chronologically, presenting early luminaries such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell; Robert Henri and the artists of the TAO community; and prominent modernist painters, including Maynard Dixon, Marsden Hartley, and Raymond Jonson. Numerous illustrations and expert interpretations chronicle the artistic, cultural, and identarian climate in the western United States during this period. A prologue by historian Dan Flores and an epilogue by art historian Erika Doss describe the vaster context in which to view this rich history of American art.