374 Nature's Cattle

Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 100,000.00 - 150,000.00 USD
Nature's Cattle
Artist: Russell, CharlesDate of Birth: 1864-1926
Medium: Bronze, Calif Art Bronze Foundry LA
Dimensions: 5 inches high, 15 inches wide
Signed: Initialed
Verso:

For Russell, the near extinction of the buffalo in the American West symbolized the passing of a great era. He himself would participate in efforts to restore the herds, efforts that eventually bore fruit. Nature’s Cattle depicts a family of buffalo—bull, cow, and calf—in a line suggestive of and hopeful about the continuity of this great American species. Nancy Russell wrote that this buffalo family was “trailing as though going to water,” and Rick Stewart agrees, referring to a roundup of buffalo Russell witnessed in 1908, “During the roundup, which took place along the Pend d’Oreille River on the Flathead Indian reservation, the artist would have seen the animals going to water many times.” (p. 174). Prominent New Mexico rancher Albert K. Mitchell, who once owned this work, donated the bulk of his splendid collection to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.