Provenance: A private collection in Colorado Literature: Romance Maker: The Watercolors of Charles M. Russell, Rick Stewart, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX, 2011: p. 384. Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonné, B. Byron Price, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2007: p. 253. In 1916, Charlie and Nancy Russell traveled south to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon and the lands of the Diné and Hopi people. The six-week adventure, much of it recorded in photographs, had an immense impact on the couple. Nancy later wrote, “This trip has been a trip of memories.” For Charlie, the trip was transformative. In a letter to artist Ed Borein, Russell described his impressions of the Navajo people: “I am glad I went and I whish I knew those people and there past…If I savyed the south west like you Id shure paint Navys [Navajos]…these riders looked lik the real thing in there high forked saddles and concho belts silver ore turquis necklaces and year rings [earrings] they were all hatless som wore split pants…they rode short sturrips an each packed a skin rope. They were not like the Indians I know…in a mixture of dust and red sunlight it made a picture that will not let me forget Arizona.” The Arizona trip would inspire a cluster of important Navajo paintings, including Navajo Wild Horse Hunters, which was painted in 1919, but dedicated in 1922 to “Thomas N. Jamieson III on his first birthday.” In Romance Maker: The Watercolors of Charles M. Russell, author Rick Stewart describes the painting: “[It] depicts Navajo riders roping horses in the confines of a staked corral. The principal roper at the center, shown making a deft underarm throw with his lariat, rests on the same tack-studded, arch-pommel saddle that Russell depicted in [an] earlier watercolor. This time the man is naked from the waist up; his purple shirt is tucked under his silver concho belt. He also wears the same muslin split-legged pants and what looks to be short blue leggings that fit over the uppers of his silver-button moccasins. His foot also appears to rest in a short stirrup, something Russell had observed in his letter to Ed Borein the previous year. The central mounted figure and the white horse that tries to dodge the lariat loop are painted in a sharper manner than the other figures, which melt into the background. The overall technique, like other watercolors of the period, is predominately the use of opaque colors laid on in an additive process, with highlights—mostly varying degrees of white or a bright, purplish blue—put on last. During his trip to Arizona Russell probably saw a few displays of Navajo horsemanship, but even if he didn't, it would have been comparatively easy for him to transpose a Navajo wrangler for a Montana one in his depiction.” Russell continued to paint Navajo riders for several years, and then again in the last year of his life.